LUCY LORD
Vanity

To my wonderful parents, Elizabeth and Christopher, with all my love.

Table of Contents

Title Page

Dedication

Part 1

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Part 2

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Read on for an extract from Lucy Lord’s next book TREACHERY

About the Author

Also by Lucy Lord

Copyright

About the Publisher

PART 1

Chapter 1

‘Bollocks,’ said the blushing bride, scrutinizing her crotch through her wedding dress in the floor-to-ceiling mirror. ‘It’s too see-through in daylight, isn’t it? I’m going to have to wear those bloody remedial granny pants.’

The pants in question were an exorbitantly expensive pair of sheer nude silk Myla boy shorts, hardly the passion-killing girdle the comment implied. But Poppy Wallace had set her heart on going commando on her Big Day.

‘Never mind,’ said her best friend Bella, topping up their glasses with Veuve Clicquot. ‘Damian can rip them off with his teeth later.’

They both looked at Poppy’s reflection. Transparency problem aside, she looked more beautiful than Bella had ever seen her, and that was saying something. The sheer white cotton voile dress, suspended from spaghetti straps and embroidered with daisies at the hem and strategically across what there was of her chest, skimmed her tiny body and floated to her delicate ankles. Her streaky white/gold hair flowed loose, halfway down her bare brown back, crowned with a sweet-smelling garland of white and yellow spring flowers. Her only jewellery was her vintage diamond-and-emerald engagement ring and an anklet fashioned out of silver daisies. She was barefoot, and her lovely little face, all wide green eyes, small nose and perfect teeth, was glowing.

Bella’s eyes filled with tears.

‘Oh, Pops, you look gorgeous. Can I hug you without ruining anything?’

‘Course you can, you silly arse. Come here.’ She flung her little arms around Bella. When she released her, Bella could see that her eyes were suspiciously shiny too. Poppy only cried on the rarest of occasions (unlike Bella, who found herself gently weeping like George Harrison’s guitar with embarrassing frequency now she was in her thirties. Sad news stories, soppy song lyrics, old episodes of Friends she’d seen a million times before – it didn’t take a lot these days).

‘If it wasn’t for you, Belles, I wouldn’t be standing here today. So thanks, lovely. For everything.’

They downed their champagne and Poppy added, ‘Looking pretty gorgeous yourself, if I may congratulate myself on my exquisite taste. In friends and clothes.’

‘Such a pretty dress.’ Bella dabbed at her eyes with her fingers, then licked them, trying not to get any watery black residue on her cotton voile halterneck bridesmaid’s frock (she’d predictably forgotten to pack waterproof mascara). She and Poppy had spent ages choosing the exact shade of coral pink that most flattered Bella’s dark hair and eyes.

‘Thanks for not putting me in lilac frills.’

‘It was touch and go, especially when you kept going on about having my hen do at School Disco.’

They both laughed.

‘Shit, look at the time!’ said Bella. It wasn’t hard to miss, a fluorescent LCD display projected against one of the whitewashed walls of the ultra-glamorous, ultra-modern villa. ‘Take one last look at yourself as a single woman, babe. No last-minute regrets?’

Poppy shook her golden head. ‘No last-minute regrets.’ They both looked at her reflection again, different memories racing through each of their minds.

‘Let’s go then. But you’d better put your knickers on first.’

Mark looked around the crowded beach and smiled broadly. What a way to get hitched, man. Playa des’Estanyol, a little sandy cove halfway up the east coast of Ibiza, was a bugger to get to, located at the bottom of a long and bumpy pine-tree-shaded track, but that hadn’t fazed Mark. He’d relished bombing down in his hired jeep, sending up clouds of white dust, fucking up the tyres and making his girlfriend Sam squeal. And even his unromantic heart had thrilled at the beauty of the beach, nestled into warm yellow rocks and backed by the lush green forest. The scent of pine groves mingled with the sea air, and clear tourmaline water lapped the pale shore. Further out, where the ocean changed to navy, pristine white sails breezed across the horizon.

Nudists habitually basked on the rocks and in the crystal waters at the southernmost end of the beach, but today they’d kept away out of deference to the nuptials. Spoilsports. In Mark’s experience, the more a nudist wanted to flaunt their bits in your face, the older and saggier they were (Scandinavians aside), but sometimes a young chick with a hot bod slipped through the net and he wasn’t above a sneaky peek. Still, it was early season, only May, and, although it was a beautiful day, in the high 20s already, the sea was probably still cold enough to freeze your nuts off.

Arctic camouflage material fluttered above the stone-clad bar/restaurant area, giving a dappled shade to the tables that had been laid for the wedding feast. Sam had said it looked like crochet from a distance. Now she was ordering a drink at the bar, possibly unaware of the fact that every male eye on the beach was currently feasting on her.

That’s my girl, thought Mark proudly, taking in her pretty little body in its short yellow dress, huge knockers threatening to burst through the thin floral fabric. Her long, straightened, henna-red hair was caught by the breeze as she noticed him watching her. A genuine smile lit up her sweet young face and she waved, tottering over the sand on foolish heels. Mark could have fucked her right there, in front of everybody.

‘Isn’t this wicked?’ she breathed in her husky voice as she reached him. ‘I can’t wait to see Poppy’s dress. And Bella’s. I bet Poppy’s got her something really nice to wear – they’re such good mates. Not like when Karen made me wear puke-green satin.’ She made a face to illustrate and Mark laughed.

‘You’d look gorgeous in anything, babe.’

Much as Mark couldn’t believe his luck about Sam, he had long harboured threesome fantasies about Poppy and Bella: Poppy so fair, Bella so dark, both of them so fit. And he’d nearly had his wicked way with Bella a couple of times last year. But that was before she got together with Andy. And before he met Sam, of course.

Damian was doing the rounds, sweating slightly in his cream linen suit. He’d be glad when he could take the bloody jacket off. It was great seeing all their friends and family gathered on the beautiful beach, the result of months of excited planning. The planning had been amazing, without doubt the best nine months of his life. He’d nearly lost Poppy last year, in more ways than one, and the joy he’d felt when she’d surprised him with a proposal had been overwhelming. Relief had turned to magical excitement as they planned every last detail of what they hoped would be the best day of their lives, and he’d never felt closer to anyone. But by God was he nervous now. He was almost 100 per cent sure he was doing the right thing.

‘Not getting cold feet are you, darling?’ asked Simon, his best man and fellow journalist on the men’s style magazine Stadium. ‘Here, have some of this.’ He passed him his drink, an ice-cold White Russian.

‘Thanks, mate.’ Damian took a swig. ‘And no, I’m not. Well – maybe a bit.’ He laughed. ‘But only stage fright, not the till-death-us-do-part bit, I’m absolutely convinced about that.’ He looked at Simon through his wraparound rock-star shades, fully aware of what most of his friends had made of Poppy’s behaviour the previous year. ‘And I’m bloody hot in this suit.’

‘Il faut souffrir être beau.’ Simon’s affected campery could be misleading sometimes. ‘Anyway, you’re lookin’ mighty fine, dude.’ And Damian was. The cream linen set off his half-Indian, half-Welsh complexion beautifully, and the sharp cut emphasized his lean build. The shades, which he planned to take off during the ceremony, concealed soulful dark eyes that slanted down at the corners.

‘But maybe you should have taken a leaf out of that couple’s book.’ Simon was now laughing in the direction of an ageing pair of ravers in matching purple sarongs. The man was bare-chested, the woman improbably pert-breasted in a gold-and-lilac paisley bandeau bikini top. They were boogying barefoot in the sand to Moby, half pissed already by the look of it.

‘That’s Bella’s dad and his latest,’ said Damian, laughing too now and waving over at them. ‘Hey, Justin, hey, Jilly.’ They waved back, blowing kisses.

‘You don’t mind them not making more of an effort?’ Simon was very conscious of his own and others’ sartorial standards. Today he was impeccably dressed in a white open-necked shirt under a similar suit to Damian’s (only in a muted café au lait shade, so as not to upstage the groom).

‘Why do you think we’re getting married on a beach, you twat?’

He just wished Poppy would hurry up so they could get this over with.

Natalia Evanovitch sipped her Cristal and surveyed the scene coolly from her hillside vantage spot. She would descend in her own time. She had only known Poppy and Damian since they’d been engaged, and in that time she had grown very fond of them; they were a good-looking, intelligent, fun-loving couple who were a great addition to her little black book. Hence the generous offer of her extraordinarily glamorous clifftop villa as both the reception after-party venue and somewhere for the wedding party to stay for the week.

Natalia was seriously loaded. As she looked down at the hipsters milling around the beach in their Alice Temperley frocks and designer shades, she reflected on the contrast between her new sunny, carefree world and her cold, dark past in Kiev. And they say that money cannot buy you happiness, she thought scornfully. Ерунда!

But if it wasn’t for her past, the money almost certainly wouldn’t exist. For a moment she gazed out over the sea, lost in thought. With an effort she snapped herself out of it. Across the pass, the wedding jeep was making its juddering way down the hill. Natalia adjusted her multicoloured silk minidress, checked her smooth platinum-blonde ponytail in the rear-view window of her state-of-the-art silver Ferrari and made a leisurely descent to the beach.

Justin and Jilly were having a whale of a time. They’d been nearly the oldest swingers in town at Pacha last night and snorted much of Colombia’s finest. The Viagra-assisted screwing had lasted till dawn, so they’d only had around three hours’ sleep.

She’s not bad for an old bird, thought Justin, checking out Jilly’s childless flat stomach and lifted tits. Even though he was at least ten years older than her, he was used to much younger totty, and his forty-five-odd years of experience as a fashion photographer generally guaranteed him access to it. But he was still smarting from the hideous events of the previous year. A young model he’d screwed had accused him of rape after he’d failed to get her picture on the cover of Italian Vogue. Justin’s moral boundaries were pretty vague, but rape? No way, José. He’d assumed she fancied him; he was still pretty buff, if he did say so himself. He thought he’d taken her to heaven and back.

So, for the time being, Jilly was as good a compromise as any. She wasn’t what you’d call a babe (too old), or a beauty, like his ex-wife Olivia (also too old, but her eyes made up for it), but she was fun, with a body that could pass for a much younger one if he closed his eyes. Which he found himself doing with increasing frequency.

‘Another tequila, you naughty old wretch?’ Jilly brandished the bottle she’d hidden in her purple, suede-tasselled handbag.

‘Thanks, angel tits.’ Justin took a hearty swig then belched slightly. Heartburn. How the fuck did Ronnie Wood do it?

‘Justin! Jilly!’

They both looked around guiltily.

Olivia regarded them with affectionate amusement. Some things never changed, and by God was she glad she wasn’t married to the silly old ‘See You Next Tuesday’ any more. She and Jilly were good friends, and knowing Jilly’s disastrous track record she thought the stupid buggers probably deserved one another. Olivia was looking beautiful in one of her Ossie Clark original maxidresses. Her chocolate-brown hair was piled into a messy up-do, her expressive dark eyes lined with kohl. The resemblance to her daughter Bella was startling.

‘Isn’t this absolutely beautiful?’ she said to Jilly, ignoring Justin, who was trying to hide the tequila bottle down the front of his sarong. ‘I must say I think we’re honoured to be invited. As far as I can make out, the only other aged Ps belong to the bride and groom.’

‘We are parents of the bridesmaid, Liv,’ said Justin pompously, giving up with the tequila bottle and chucking it on the sand. He started rolling a spliff. ‘And we’ve known Poppy since she was a little girl. She must have been about … seven?’ After the excesses of the years, details could get a little hazy.

‘Ah, yes, I remember it well,’ said Olivia drily. ‘Bella first brought her home from school when they were both ten. God, they were sweet.’ Always maternal, she smiled fondly at the memory of the two little girls in bunches and ankle socks, holding hands.

‘Here’s your vino, Princess.’ A gargantuan man in a lurid tropical-print shirt appeared at the edge of the group and thrust a glass of white wine into Olivia’s slender hand. His own fingers were fat and bedecked with signet rings.

‘Thanks, Bernie, darling.’ Olivia smiled at him.

‘Bernie, mate!’ Justin was effusive in his greeting, even though the four of them had lunched together at Las Salinas beach only the previous day. He had a lot of time for his ex-wife’s partner (horrible word, but what else could he call him? Boyfriend was ridiculous, at their age, and he drew the line at lover when talking about his ex-wife).

‘Fancy a toke on this?’

‘Not my bag, me old china, but cheers anyway.’ Bernie’s beady little eyes were as amused as Olivia’s large brown ones. ‘So did you two find anywhere to carry on partying last night?’

‘On this island? With this body?’ Jilly thrust her hips in a manner that even Justin found faintly embarrassing and hard to respond to.

‘Pacha,’ he said quickly. And because he was a nice man, despite everything, added, ‘You were the most gorgeous babe in there. Just check out those abs!’

‘Oh, do shut up, you ridiculous old man. They’re coming! Don’t you want to see our daughter in her moment of glory?’ Olivia put a finger to her lips with one hand and smacked her ex-husband’s wrist with the other.

They watched in silence as Poppy floated down the beach on her mother’s arm, Bella a few paces behind. An aisle leading down to the water’s edge had been fashioned out of terracotta tubs of miniature orange trees, in full bridal blossom. Damian, now without his shades, was waiting where the sea lapped the shore. Even from where they were standing near the bar, Olivia could see how nervous he was.

‘Doesn’t our little girl look beautiful?’ said Justin, wondering if he really could make out Poppy’s nipples underneath the embroidery on her dress.

‘You may now kiss the bride,’ said the be-garlanded, white-suited registrar. ‘Un beso, por favor!’

Damian clasped Poppy to his linen breast and Bella felt her eyes misting up again at the sight of them, so perfect against the gradated blue of the horizon. She looked around for her boyfriend, Andy, who smiled at her. She smiled back. He looked very handsome and very tall in an olive-green linen jacket over faded Levis. The bright spring sunshine bounced off his oblong specs, which (by luck, rather than design; Andy was not a vain man) emphasized high cheekbones and a strong jaw.

‘I declare this sea well and truly open!’ shouted Poppy, chucking her bouquet over her shoulder and dragging Damian into the water with her. Bella ran to catch the bouquet but just missed it. She picked it up, trying to shake the sand off the pretty yellow and white flowers, and turned to see Andy looking at her again. He wasn’t smiling now. She ran over, slightly embarrassed.

‘Think I’d better ask them to put these lovely flowers in some water.’

Andy nodded. Bella knew he was wary of marriage, but he needn’t be quite so fucking obvious about it.

Soon everybody was dancing in the sea to Groove Armada – singing about sand dunes and salty air – some more careless of their costly garb than others.

Mark had been right about the temperature of the sea, but the mood was infectious and it was ages before they all sat down to lunch.

The meal was typically Ibicenco and utterly delicious. Local ham with rustic bread, aïoli and olives, followed by huge paellas bursting with fresh seafood, peppers, rabbit and chorizo, served from big, hot pans at the tables. Bella squeezed a wedge of lemon over her steaming rice and wiped her fingers on a linen napkin.

She was sitting in the dappled shade of the Arctic camouflage net with Andy, Simon, Natalia, Mark and Sam. The bride and groom were sharing a table with Damian’s parents and Poppy’s mother. Poppy had been heartbroken that her father, in the advanced stages of Alzheimer’s, was too ill to be at her wedding – whether it had been held in the UK or not. He wasn’t even aware she was getting married, poor old love, despite the happy couple’s repeated and increasingly desolate announcements, complete with ring flashing, at his care home.

The two hundred-odd guests sounded pretty happy with their lot as decibel levels rose with the rosé consumption. At the next table, Bella’s mother, father, Bernie and Jilly were already on their fourth bottle.

‘What a lovely day,’ she said, full of tipsy sunshiny happiness. ‘I just knew Poppy would get it right.’

‘I think she had a lot of help from her devoted friend, no?’ said Natalia, turning her slanting grey-blue gaze on Bella. The diamonds in her ears and scraped-back hair emphasized the height and acute angle of her cheekbones.

‘I guess so.’ Bella grinned, recalling the hours she and Poppy had spent poring over fabric swatches, menus and playlists. ‘But I enjoyed every minute of it.’ She glanced over at the bridal table.

Poppy was throwing her head back in peals of laughter at something Damian had just said. Bella was so happy they were back together. This time for real. Last year, she’d caught Poppy in flagrante with Ben Jones, Bella’s then boyfriend, an up-and-coming actor. At the time, Bella had hated them both with every fibre of her being, and, were she honest, wished them both dead. But Ben went on to cheat on Poppy, who subsequently OD’d on a cocktail of drugs, both recreational and prescription. Despite the Balearic sun, Bella went cold as she recalled finding Poppy unconscious in her flat, surrounded by narcotic paraphernalia. Thank God she’d found her when she had.

Everything’s worked out for the best, she thought contentedly, gulping back her delicious chilled rosé and turning her face up to the sun. She was happier with Andy than she’d ever been in her life. Eight months on, she was still waking every day with an idiotic grin on her face.

Impulsively she leant over and kissed him on the cheek.

‘What was that for?’ He smiled at her.

‘Nothing really. Just thinking how happy I am that everything’s worked out like it has.’

With the crema catalana came balloon glasses half filled with ice and hierbas, the potent local hooch made, as its name might suggest, from mountain herbs.

‘So how are things in the men’s magazine world?’ Andy asked Mark and Simon, who worked alongside Damian on Stadium, the men’s ‘style’ magazine that liked to think it had more substance than the rest. Simon and Damian were columnists, which involved churning out variations on a superiorly misogynist theme, month after month. Mark was the art director, which gave him so much opportunity to ogle naked female flesh you’d think (erroneously) that he could take it or leave it by now.

Andy’s career – he was an investigative reporter for one of the better respected broadsheets – earned him grudging respect from Simon and slight resentment from Damian, who had always harboured ambitions in that direction himself. Still, as Simon said, the perks and parties at Stadium more than made up for a little professional jealousy. Or at least they used to.

‘Not great, to be honest,’ said Simon. ‘It’s a bloody drag. Sales have been hit badly by the recession. The downmarket rags – Nuts and Zoo and now Front; did they really need another one? How many boobs does the Great British Public need? – are cornering the market.’

Bella nudged Andy. Stadium was not exactly what you’d call a boob-free zone, though the boobs it showcased tended, with the odd honourable exception, to be smaller. Classier, you see.

‘Well that whole bespoke ethos is a bit anachronistic at the moment, isn’t it?’ said Sam, one of the honourable exceptions, in her husky voice, earning a look of surprise from Simon. ‘You should see your face! I’m not that thick, you know, and I’ve been reading Stadium cover-to-cover ever since I first appeared in it. I like to keep up on Marky’s job.’

Sam had taken up glamour modelling to pay her way through London University, where she was studying philosophy and psychology. She and Mark had met on a shoot. Fond though Bella was of Mark, she reckoned Sam was streets ahead of him intellectually. But she was young and easily impressed and Mark was seriously sexy, in a brawny, doltish sort of way. Today he was wearing tight white jeans and a scarlet racer-back vest top, revealing rippling biceps, triceps, pecs and lats in all their worked-out glory. To say nothing of the vast packet. His head was shaved, his smile crooked. When Bella first met him (long before she experienced the full – ahem – thrust of his lust), she’d had her doubts as to whether he was Arthur or Martha.

As if to prove the point, he laughed and kissed Sam way more explicitly than manners dictated, groping her left tit and shoving his tongue down her throat. Bella remembered what it was like kissing him and reached for Andy’s hand, flushing suddenly.

‘Ugh, get a rrrrroooom, please,’ said Natalia, shuddering. Sam pulled away from Mark and laughed.

‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘He does get carried away sometimes. Anyway, where were we? Oh, yes, surely all that handmade suit and expensive trainers stuff just doesn’t cut it when people can’t even pay their mortgages?’

‘It’s aspirational luxury though.’ Simon stuck stubbornly to his guns. ‘People need things to cheer them up when times are tough. Just look at the Busby Berkeley movies of the thirties.’

‘Are you comparing Stadium to Busby Berkeley movies?’ Bella laughed. ‘Not sure what your emphatically not gay metrosexual readership would make of that.’

Simon laughed too. ‘Oh, I don’t know. It’s too depressing to discuss on such a lovely day, anyway. Are you working on anything interesting at the moment, Andy?’

‘Interesting, yes, but not what you’d call uplifting.’ He smiled briefly at Simon and squeezed Bella’s hand, trying to reassure her.

‘Try me,’ said Simon.

‘Do you remember that piece I did on the Albanian people-traffickers last year?’ As Simon nodded, Andy muttered, ‘People-traffickers … fucking euphemism for what these animals do … Anyway, one of them has tipped me off about another, bigger gang, which controls half the underage brothels in London.’

‘Wow,’ said Simon. ‘That’s heavy stuff. Why didn’t he go to the police though?’

‘He’s seriously scared of the retributions if it got back to the big boss, who has his spies, even within the police force. He seems to think he can trust me though.’ Andy’s clever eyes were serious behind their glasses. ‘I suppose he can. Even though I still think he’s lower than scum, if we get this lot, hundreds of girls might be saved.’

‘Eees the big gang Russian?’ asked Natalia, who was watching and listening intently.

Andy smiled at her apologetically. ‘’Fraid so.’

‘I really wish you could investigate slightly less horrible and dangerous people,’ said Bella, trying to keep her tone light, though the thought of her beloved Andy in danger was tearing her guts to shreds. ‘Or start working for a tabloid, where the extent of your investigative journalism would be rummaging through minor celebs’ dustbins, or even a spot of phone hacking …’

Andy laughed and kissed her on the forehead.

‘Don’t worry about me, my love. You know I’m always careful.’

Chapter 2

The newlyweds stood at the edge of the cliff, looking over at the lights in the Old Town.

‘Shall we just fuck off to Space and get off our tits instead?’ asked Damian. The after-party was raging colourfully behind them. He was sure he could hear Bella’s dad shouting something inappropriate.

‘And leave behind the people we love, who’ve come a long way to be with us, to meet a whole load of strangers we don’t, and who haven’t?’ Poppy laughed and kissed him on the nose, standing on tiptoes to reach.

‘I know, I know, it’s just … if we were with a whole load of strangers, it would feel like it was just us, alone, amongst – well, strangers … But now we’re with people who know everything about us, and I want to feel alone with you, Mrs Evans-Wallace.’ He started to kiss her so hard that they both fell onto the scrubby grass, inches away from the cliff-face.

‘Well, Mr Wallace-Evans …’ Poppy panted, fumbling at the crotch of his linen trousers, ‘I don’t know about you, but I think we’re pretty alone here.’

She started licking the top of his cock, and as he moaned, she murmured, ‘Move away from the edge you silly sod, I don’t want to be widowed on my wedding night.’

They both laughed and rolled backwards together away from the edge. Poppy started licking his cock again and he moaned some more, then stopped. He gently pulled her head back by her silky long blonde hair.

‘What’s wrong?’ Nobody turned down Poppy’s blowjobs, let alone her husband on their wedding night.

Damian pulled her up so they were eye to eye.

‘Nothing’s wrong, my dearest Poppydoodle. I just don’t want to consummate our marriage like this. I want to be inside you, like …’

‘Like this?’ Poppy grinned wickedly and, in an impressive display of agility, manoeuvred herself on top of him, pulling her flimsy wedding dress up and equally flimsy Myla boy shorts to one side. Soon she was groaning too, biting her lip to stop shouting so loudly they’d be heard by all the guests. Just as she was about to come, Damian withdrew, threw her over, whipped the pants off altogether, then lunged back into her with such force she thought she might explode. Then she did cry out, but he shoved his hand over her mouth.

‘Shhhh, Mrs Evans-Wallace. You’re all mine now.’

As Poppy came to her senses she grinned again. ‘Well, Mr Wallace-Evans, if this is what being married is all about, I think I could get used to it. Shall we gaze up at the stars like lovestruck teenagers for a bit now?’

Damian smiled and kissed her again but she pulled away and forced him to look at the stellar landscape above their heads. ‘I always thought that Ursa Minor sounded like a poor little boy being bullied by someone like Flashman at a horrible Victorian public school …’

The villa was like nothing Sam had ever seen in her life. The vast, modernist, starkly white edifice seemed to grow organically from the hillside. How could that be possible? How could something potentially so incongruous, definitely so gratuitous, look so at one with the landscape? Sam, who’d read up on Ibiza thoroughly before coming to the wedding, assumed it was because the lines followed those of the hill and that the white building, while modelled on a far larger and more glamorous scale than those traditional cuboid cottages, kept the Ibicenco essence.

There had to be at least five levels of asymmetrical terraces, all of which were occupied with Poppy and Damian’s guests, whose laughter and chatter filled the air. Or perhaps not quite filled, thought Sam, ever precise. She’d surprised and delighted her parents by getting 12 A*s at GCSE and 4 A*s – Maths, Biology, Chemistry and English – at A Level. She’d always been clever, but her mum and dad worked so hard keeping their small catering business afloat there had never been a huge amount of time for things like parents’ evenings and helping her with her homework. And looking after her little brother Ryan was a full-time job in itself, of course.

The reason the guests’ chatter and laughter didn’t quite fill the air was the insistent hum of cicadas that served as constant background noise, and the deep thudding bass line of some classic house that emanated from whichever balcony one of the island’s numerous obnoxious DJs was playing. Every other plant, from pines to palms and bougainvillea, was lit up with fairy lights, and candles in jewel-hued Moroccan glasses illuminated every path.

It was all breathtaking, but what really made it, in Sam’s eyes at least, was the pool. It actually went all the way around the house, like an enormous turquoise moat, with waterfalls gushing down in stages from the back, where it was higher up the hill – and according to Bella, the coolest place to escape the fierce midday heat. At the front, the infinity pool seemed to stretch right to the edge of the cliff. Sam, who’d come up from the beach with the others after dark, imagined that in daylight it would be difficult to know where the pool stopped and the sky or sea began. In the middle of the pool was an island with a bar on it, and three palm trees, now silhouetted gracefully against the horizon.

The view, even at night-time, was phenomenal. Bella had told her you could see Formentera from here too. She was looking forward to taking the ferry to Formentera with Mark. She’d read that the water was unbelievable there and that there were loads of nudists. She was happy baring her body, as she’d done it for the cameras enough times, and thought it would be really sexy to be skinny-dipping with her gorgeous hunk in the beautiful sea. She felt happiest with him when they were both naked – that was when she knew he loved her. Even though she thought she was probably as clever as he was, he and his friends seemed so sophisticated that she always felt a bit out of her depth in their company.

His friends at lunch today had been lovely, of course. Bella had always been particularly kind to her, and even that weird Natalia didn’t treat her like some kind of tart.

But loads of the guests today, just like other friends Mark had introduced her to, looked her up and down in two very distinct, and very obvious ways. The blokes looked as if they just wanted to shag her, and she could deal with that, really, because blokes had wanted to shag her ever since she hit puberty. What peed her off was the way they nudged Marky and came out with their not-so-subtle innuendos, just as if, because she had big tits, she wouldn’t understand a bloody word they said.

It was the women who were the worst though. Sam was savvy enough to realize that women in their thirties felt a bit threatened by her young, nubile body, but all she wanted to do was scream at them, ‘I don’t want your bloody boyfriends! If it wasn’t for Marky, I wouldn’t be here anyway and he’s more than enough for me.’ But she just had to smile politely at their bitchy comments and get the odd bit of satisfaction at their looks of surprise when Mark boasted about her philosophy and psychology studies. Though one particularly hatchet-faced old bag did mutter something about ‘dumbed-down Britain’ and ‘of course, everybody has a degree these days.’

She wished Mark would hurry up with her drink. Three blokes had already tried to get her into the pool, saying she’d win any wet T-shirt contest going, and she felt a bit of a pillock, really, standing around on her own in her uncomfortable glittery platforms.

Andy and Bella were floating on blow-up armchairs towards the infinity edge of the pool, which was so brightly lit that the people swimming naked underneath could be seen in all their glory. Sadly for Bella, her father was one of them, but she’d seen it all before; for as long as she could remember, he’d been partial to swimming and sunbathing in the altogether.

‘Daddy, can’t you put your willy away?’

‘What’s that, sweetheart? Sorry, water in my ears, can’t hear you.’ And he went back down to ogle a bit more.

‘Don’t worry about him, darling,’ drawled Jilly from the bar on the island, wiping white powder from her nose. ‘He’ll never change.’

‘But it’s so rude to you, Jilly. He makes me so cross – why do you put up with it?’

‘Your father is what he is, sweetheart. We have a damn good giggle, he’s kind to me, unlike some of the arseholes I’ve known, and he’s never promised me anything. Besides, Jorge here is far more handsome, don’t you think?’ She guffawed and, as Bella refocused her eyes, she realized that Jilly was fondling the barman’s tanned and muscular naked buttocks. All the barmen were wearing g-strings and little white aprons.

Natalia, who was perched on one of the island’s white linen upholstered bar stools, long legs elegantly crossed, winked at Bella. She had changed out of her Pucci minidress into a Schiaparelli pink high-cut swimsuit and a crystal-embossed, rainbow-hued sarong.

‘You want some naughty dust?’

Finding Poppy nearly dead from a cocktail of coke, ecstasy, Temazepam and vodka last year had put something of a dampener on Bella’s enthusiasm for the hard stuff. But in such a ridiculously bacchanalian setting, who could say no, really?

‘Yes, please.’ She suddenly sounded embarrassingly jolly-hockey-sticks, as though Joyce Grenfell had been her favourite teacher at Malory Towers or St Clare’s. She looked at Andy. ‘Darling?’

‘Well, I have never been in a pool with an island and a bar before, so I think, yes, please, too!’

Taking advantage of one of her beloved’s rare moments of frivolity, Bella manoeuvred her floating armchair towards his to kiss him. As she reached out she accidentally launched herself into the water, knocking Andy out of his chair too. They were both laughing as they re-emerged and hauled themselves up onto the island.

‘What an amazing place you have here, Natalia,’ said Andy, handing her back the silver-plated coke straw. She put it onto the mirrored bar top, next to the absurdly over-the-top silver coke urn, and Andy went to the edge of the island to look out at the view, shaking the water out of his short black hair.

‘Yes, it’s just fabulous,’ said Bella, following his lovely tall body with her eyes. He wasn’t excessively muscular (Andy had far more important things to do than waste time in the gym), but he still made her weak at the knees with his long legs and broad shoulders. All at one with the world, she tried to focus on the view too. ‘Isn’t that Formentera over there?’ She pointed in the direction of the Old Town.

‘No, no, sweet Bella, that is Old Eivissa,’ said Natalia.

‘Bugger, I’ve never been any good at directions.’ Bella laughed. ‘But this really is out of this world, and it’s so great of you to do this for Poppy and Damian.’

Natalia waved her bejewelled hands around impatiently.

‘Pouf, I haf money and small villa! What use is it for me on my own?’ Then she looked at Bella curiously. ‘Anyway, do you not think it is great for you to do this for Poppy?’

‘What?’ For a moment, Bella hadn’t a clue what she was on about. ‘Oh, you mean the Ben stuff. Well, he was an absolute wanker anyway, and I’m happy with Andy now, so …’

‘So …’ Natalia patted her on the shoulder. ‘You are a good and strong woman, like my old mamushka.’ She looked sad, and Bella was torn between sympathy, curiosity and an unedifying desire to be compared to something more glamorous.

Mark, Sam and a load of people she didn’t know, but who all seemed to know Marky, were lounging in Natalia’s rainbow chill-out room, which wasn’t as awful as it sounded. An enormous, circular area, half open to the sea a long way beneath, with every bit of floor covered in cushions of all colours, fabrics and sizes, at least three layers deep, it gave new meaning to the concept of chilling out.

The only pieces of furniture were several low white stone tables, essential for the balancing of ashtrays and glasses. The expanse of semi-circular whitewashed wall was hung with around fifteen vividly coloured, apparently abstract paintings. Once you got closer, you could see that they were more impressionist than abstract, all depicting the same view at different times of day, night and year. Individually, each painting would have been nice to have on your wall, thought Sam, but all bunched together like this they were incredible.

‘Bella really got lucky when she met old Nat.’ Mark laughed, drawing on a badly rolled spliff.

‘Don’t be nasty, Marky!’ said Sam, then snuggled up to him again, not wanting to put him off her. ‘Bella’s a brilliant artist.’

‘Oh, I know she is, babe. Who’s the one who keeps giving her freelance illustration work?’ Mark puffed up his huge chest and pointed at it, making Sam giggle.

‘I asked you a question, babe! Who?’ He started tickling her and, even though she thought she might die from lust, she eventually managed,

‘You are, Marky!’

He kissed her, using his tongue.

‘That’s better. Remember who’s boss around here, gorgeous.’ He took another draw on the spliff. ‘But you gotta admit Bella’s fucking lucky – finding someone as cunting loaded as Natalia, who’s fucking obsessed with mad colours, to buy them all at her first exhibition? That’s what I call bollock-busting luck.’

‘Are you talking about my daughter?’ asked an amused and very posh voice.

Mark looked over lazily in the direction of a beautiful older woman whose kaftan suited the surroundings so much he thought she’d be just perfect for a Stadium shoot, if they ever had a granny-fanciers’ edition.

‘Oh, hi, Olivia. Yeah, just saying how great for Belles that old Nat bought all her paintings.’

‘Yes, that was certainly a lucky break. Well, I just came in to see how they looked in here, and I must say I think Natalia’s done her proud.’

‘Hi,’ said Sam. ‘I’m Sam.’

‘Oh, how lovely, Bella’s told me all about you. I’m Olivia,’ said Olivia, extending an elegant hand. ‘Do you mind if I join you?’

Sam got up and fussed around with some cushions, trying to make it comfortable for her, but Olivia brushed her off.

‘Thank you, darling, but don’t be silly. It’s absolutely fine as it is.’ And she sat down, cross-legged in her kaftan, opposite them. Catching sight of the spliff burning itself out in the ashtray, she added, ‘You young things nowadays seem to have no idea how to roll joints. Give that to me, please – I can hardly bear to look at it.’

Momentarily terrified with dope fear, Mark passed Olivia the ashtray.

‘D’you have any more skins?’ she asked, and he reached into his pocket for a packet of Rizlas. Deftly, she tapped off the burning end and tore the silly thing open.

‘That’s better, isn’t it?’ She beamed around at them, having re-rolled a perfect, tight little spliff with her right hand. Her left was holding a large glass of white wine. ‘I do hate waste.’

‘Bugger me, where’d you learn to do that?’ Mark laughed.

‘I was a teenager in the sixties, darling, was married to Justin Brown, and spent an awful lot of the seventies in Morocco. May I?’

Mark nodded and she lit it and toked, inhaling deeply.

‘Gosh, that really makes Bella’s colours look cool,’ she said, gazing at her daughter’s paintings on the wall, and Mark and Sam both laughed.

‘Sam, darling, you’re awfully pretty. Oh, of course, you’re the one who dabbles in modelling. I did that donkey’s years ago, though I was slimmer then …’

‘You’re still beautiful,’ said Mark and Sam simultaneously, and Olivia laughed.

‘Past my prime, I’m afraid.’ She turned her hypnotic gaze on Sam again. ‘I imagine modelling’s very different these days. We used to make up our own faces, and sometimes we even wore our own clothes, you know.’

‘Yes, I’ve heard about that,’ said Sam, wondering exactly how much Bella had told her mum about the nature of her modelling, and trying to ignore the smirk on Marky’s face.

‘I don’t have any of that old shit,’ said Big Sean, the obnoxious DJ that Poppy had poached from Pacha for a small fortune, rolling his eyes. As he was about five foot seven, the name was presumably meant to be ironic – unless his Napoleon complex was seriously out of control.

‘Find it then. It’s my wedding and I’m paying you enough,’ Poppy said steelily. ‘And I’d like you to dedicate it to Natalia. If that’s not too much trouble.’ The little cunt looked as if he wanted to throw himself off the cliff, then looked once more at the opulence of the villa and Poppy’s intransigence and took out his BlackBerry.

‘José, mate, I’m dealin’ with people who want old shit.’

He rolled his eyes again and Poppy whispered to Bella,

‘Once he’s played the music for Natalia, we can all chuck him in, fucking CrackBerry and all.’

Bella giggled and jumped back into the pool, feeling as wonderfully mad as good mad can feel. Poppy joined her and they swam over to the island for another line. The entire party was rocking now, the best (or worst) of London’s media twats splashing about in the water, smoking dope in hammocks or just ecstatic at the sounds of their own voices as they pontificated. Poppy worked in TV production, Damian in the men’s magazine world; it was hardly surprising that a large proportion of the guest list was very pleased with itself indeed. Most of them had started believing their own publicity years ago.

‘Oh, Pops, I love you.’ The girls exchanged soggy and effusive hugs on the island. ‘HAPPY WEDDING!’

‘Yay! Happy my wedding too!’ Poppy lay back on the deck in her virginal white bikini and said, with all the seriousness that a drunk and coked-up bride could muster, ‘But also, babes, I’m so happy you’re so happy with Andy. He’s a wonderful man.’

‘Yes, he is,’ said Bella dreamily. Then she laughed. ‘Just listen to us. It’s your wedding. Damian’s a wonderful man too, and I’ve never seen you look so beautiful.’

Poppy shrugged it off, as only somebody who’s been told she’s beautiful every day of her life can.

‘No, Andy’s better.’

‘No, Damian’s better.’

‘Andy’s better.’

‘Damian’s better.’

‘Andy!’

‘Damian!’

And on and on they went until Poppy pushed Bella into the water. Bella pulled Poppy in after her by a slender ankle and they laughed and laughed, looking up at the Balearic stars as they floated on extraordinary buoyant fake water lilies that glittered in the myriad lights of the pool.

After a bit, Poppy said, ‘Let’s go and find our wonderful men and see if Pig Sean has managed to find the Beatles track for Natalia yet.’

‘Pig Sean!’ Bella spluttered, nearly falling off her fake lily. ‘That’s brilliant, Pops!’

‘I know. Just call me Oscar Wilde,’ retorted Poppy solemnly. And arm-in-arm, they walked up the pool’s wide, mosaic-tiled steps, happy as pigs in shit.

Natalia wasn’t used to letting her defences drop. In fact she couldn’t remember the last time she had danced with such abandon, but Poppy and Bella had told Pig Sean to play ‘Back in the USSR’ for her, and insisted that everybody – even the guests enjoying themselves on other terraces – danced around her main pool to it. She loved the song, of course she did, especially the bit about the Ukraine girls knocking the Beatles out. She could remember her mamushka playing black-market Beatles LPs when she was a little girl back in Kiev. But for all her apparently insouciant glamour, she would never have insisted on it herself; she wanted everything cool by DJ standards. They were so lucky, these English kids, with their automatic assumption that people wouldn’t call them tacky. They could be ‘retro’ or ‘ironic’ and still considered cool. For Natalia (aged 39 forever) the line was too narrow.

Bella’s ridiculous father was shouting along to the chorus, thrusting his skinny hips at her.

Ha! You would be so lucky, Natalia thought. Men like you used to pay me five grand a night.

Something snapped inside her, and for the first time in years she allowed herself to let her hair down in public. Literally. She unleashed the painfully tight ponytail and shook her platinum-blonde hair around her face as she gyrated round the fabulous property that she had worked so long and hard for.

The crowd whooped and cheered. Quite staggeringly, not a single person was talking about him- or herself, all mesmerized by the ice queen apparently melting. Poppy and Bella, both still in their bikinis, were dancing around her, swishing their wet hair madly.

Once it had finished, Poppy took the mike from Pig Sean.

‘Can we all now raise our glasses to our fabulous hostess, Natalia Evanovitch! Hostess with the mostest!’

‘Hostess with the mostest!’ people hollered drunkenly, though some of them were now starting to lose interest and wanted to talk about themselves again.

‘Natalia, we love you. Thank you so much for everything,’ said Poppy, as Damian approached with an enormous bouquet of lilies. He kissed Natalia, and the less self-absorbed people still watching cheered some more.

‘Natalia, we can never thank you enough for your generosity, so … I’ll spare your blushes. Enough’s enough, but one more toast, please, ladies and gentlemen … NATALIA!’

‘NATALIA!’

Pig Sean put his shades on.

‘Can I go now?’ he said petulantly. ‘I’m starting my set at Space in two hours.’

‘Feel free,’ said Poppy, winking at Bella. ‘And I’d like to thank you for being so gracious and accommodating. It’s really made my wedding special.’

As Pig Sean walked along the edge of the pool to collect his DJ stuff, Poppy gave him a little shove. Caught off guard, he went flying into the water. The look of indignation on his arrogant face was priceless, and although (or perhaps because) Poppy’s gesture was so childish, all the people who generally considered themselves sophisticated pissed themselves laughing.

Natalia’s white-blonde hair was wavy about her face, her slanty, wide-apart eyes almost invisible with laughter.

‘Oh, you guys,’ she eventually spluttered. ‘I cannot recall more fun ever. Thank you!’

She reclined on one of her incredibly expensive sun loungers and looked up at the stars, laughing happily.

She was still smiling to herself as she sat on her terrace, at the top of her tower – the one above the semicircular chill-out room. She had just risen and the party was still going strong somewhere in her massive villa, but she, Natalia, had had enough by about six a.m. and had taken herself up to her own private sanctum.

She had a baby hangover, but that was OK. It had been worth it. Natalia only took two, maybe three lines of cocaine on special occasions, and she paced herself with the champagne. She had always had to keep her wits about her. For a moment, she felt envious of Poppy and Bella, so stupidly wasted in the pool, and having so much fun – the worst they could ever have from a hangover was embarrassment. Natalia knew differently.

She could hear some music. Aha – that’s where they all were – around the back, singing along to some ridiculous song about being in the mood for dancing. Then multiple splashes. The deep thud thud thud of a very different kind of dance music had been reverberating, almost lulling her to sleep, yet now they put on this? Again, she envied their total confidence that whatever rubbish (and this music was rubbish) they played, nobody would sneer. She loved the fact that people were enjoying her hospitality, but it was bittersweet. She could never really be one of them, not with her past.

She heard Bella trying to whisper, but actually shrieking quite loudly, ‘Shhh, maybe we should turn it down a bit? Natalia’s probably still trying to sleep.’

Sweet girl. Sweet life.

But she was a little bit hungry now. Natalia needed her pineapple, mango and green tea in the morning. She laughed to herself as she recalled what hunger used to be, when she would devour bread because there was nothing else. These idiots with their intolerances. Bread and milk were the staff of life when you had that perpetual gnawing hunger pain. The self-indulgence of pampered Western women, claiming they were intolerant to wheat or ‘dairy’ made her quite sick. However, she had adapted, and realized that by cutting them out, she could keep the remarkably slender frame she’d had since her teens. Her stomach was as flat as it had ever been.

Natalia caught sight of her reflection in one of the shiny glass doors leading out from her bedroom. With her white-blonde hair tied back loosely, her skin nearly baby-soft, wiped clean of make-up with Eve Lom cleanser, she looked much younger than she normally did, with the tight ponytail and diamonds. Comfortable in her pistachio-green silk chiffon French knickers and camisole, she stretched her legs out on the marble-topped table, admiring their length.

Natalia was almost entirely without vanity. Her body had served its purpose and she regarded it with fond objectivity. Without it, none of this would have been possible. Even though they were no longer necessary, old habits died hard, and she was scrupulous in her body’s maintenance, even enduring painful Brazilian waxes when she couldn’t remember the last time anybody had seen her влагалище. For Natalia, love, or even sex for pleasure, was not an option. She had a vibrator to cater for such needs and had never had any reason to view men with anything but fear, suspicion, and a very canny eye for the main chance.

Thinking again about the old days, she rang the bell and asked for a croissant. What the hell. Wheat intolerances be damned – she could afford to indulge herself once in a while. She looked out at the wonderful view. Several yachts were floating on the deep-blue sea, their sails whiter than white against the horizon. Maybe she should buy a yacht? They were very expensive, of course, but her finances were in pretty good order now. She threw back her head and laughed with sheer joy. Not only had she escaped, but now she had this!

‘Señora?’

Natalia turned around to accept her breakfast platter.

The dark-eyed waiter grinned, exposing three gold teeth, and suddenly she knew that this happiness was not here to stay.

‘Georgiou? Is it really you? What you want? You want money? I haf plenty money,’ she said in slightly broken English – it happened when she was thrown off kilter, which wasn’t often these days.

‘I know,’ he said in Russian.

Trying to stay cool, Natalia walked slowly inside to find her Chanel handbag, where she always kept 2,000 US dollars, in case of emergencies. This was one emergency that, after the initial years, she had prayed would never occur. As she took the notes out, several fluttered from her trembling hands. The dark-eyed waiter watched as she bent to retrieve them. She knew he was loving every minute of her cowed subservience.

‘Please, take them, Georgie, and never come back.’

He smiled again. Never had gold teeth looked so repulsive.

‘Talia, I thank you. But I’ll be back.’

Chapter 3

Ben Jones walked naked to his large American fridge and cracked open a Bud. It tasted like piss, but he was prepared to put up with weak beer when he considered the compensations.

He’d just been for a run along the beach at Malibu Colony. He’d been in LA for two months now and still couldn’t get over the babes and endless sunshine. Today (like yesterday, and the day before, and the day before that) would have been the best day of summer back home; any one of the girls he’d met during his run would have been the best-looking babe in London. Wales wasn’t comparable, on either count.

He was used to hanging out with models and actresses, but they were a completely different breed here in California. The edginess/quirkiness/kookiness (take your pick) so prized by the coolest London model agencies would be greeted here with absolute bemusement. If anything fell short of cookie-cutter perfection, the little darlings just went and got it fixed.

Without even trying, he’d picked up a fistful of colourful business cards during his run. He picked a few off the breakfast bar and laughed.

I’m Carrie (heart drawn above the i). Actress, model, spiritual healer. Call me!

Melissa – I do pedicures and aura cleansing. Let me make you beautiful, inside AND out! Sole and soul!

Jennifer Jackson. Nutritionist and personal trainer.

He turned over the last one to see the photo (they all had photos on the back) and recalled the mixed-race girl with a wide smile, dreadlocks and body to die for. He’d actually stopped for a few seconds to watch her arse as she sauntered off in the sand. Then he’d jogged back to the rented clapboard beach house his agent had found for him. He put Jennifer Jackson’s card to one side – she might be worth a booty call.

Beautiful, and vain as hell, Ben walked over to the floor-to-ceiling mirror that lined the far wall of his open-plan living space. His floppy gold-streaked light brown fringe, still a little damp from the shower, grazed his long black eyelashes. His pink pouty lips, delicious blue eyes and high cheekbones had made him such a hit back home that he had managed to acquire an LA agent almost without trying.

People Like Us, the UK sitcom whose first series he had starred in, had been a runaway success and attracted the interest of Belinda Hyman, one of the most notoriously hard-bitten agents in Hollywood. He was contracted to star in three series of People Like Us, and due to start filming the next in a few months’ time, but if he landed a movie role – well. Belinda wasn’t known as the Bitch of Beverly Hills for nothing.

Ben flexed a muscle or two and smiled in satisfaction.

Looking good, boyo. Occasionally, the Welsh accent resurfaced, though only in his head.

‘Benny, honey? Baby’s getting lonely,’ called a very young voice from his bedroom.

He smiled again, focusing on his newly whitened teeth, as he recalled the cheerleader he’d picked up at the game last night. Sweet seventeen and definitely been fucked. He’d been to watch the LA Lakers with a couple of fellow ex-pats and this fantastic specimen of perky blonde near-jailbait had – well – just thrown herself at him. No other way of putting it. He did love California, despite the weak beer.

But during his run, his mind had been on Bella, Poppy and Damian, all of whom he’d comprehensively shafted the previous year. Ben wasn’t one for an enormous amount of introspection, but even he felt bad about what he’d done.

Bella had been great to start with – fun and sexy, with a healthy appetite for all the good things in life. But once they had that horrible intimacy thing going, she got so bloody needy, and the way she gazed at him with those huge hurt brown eyes made him feel guilty as fuck, especially when he’d shagged the odd model on the odd shoot (a man’s prerogative, he’d always felt – or at least an accepted perk of the job). As an angelic-looking only child, Ben had been spoilt rotten his entire life and wasn’t used to being denied what he wanted.

Fucking Poppy hadn’t been his best move, but Poppy was the antithesis of Bella – tiny, blonde and fiery – and the contrast (and, to be scrupulously honest, the illicitness) had turned him on. He’d tired of Poppy pretty quickly, after the initial thrill, not least as she had been so evidently off her pretty face on coke all the time, going on about her guilt about Bella, boring the pants off him. Still, he shouldn’t have moved in on his best mate’s bird; that was unforgivable. Ben and Damian had grown up together and he still missed Damian’s easy good nature and laid-back sense of humour; he’d yet to meet a comparable buddy in the States. All things considered, if he could have done last summer differently, he would. It had been a mad time for all concerned.

But now wasn’t the time to be crying over spilt milk.

‘Ben, honey, where ARE you? Are going to come and show me how to do it again? I was a virgin until last night, but you’ve given me a real taste for it. I’m only seventeen …’

The Laker Girl was clearly lying and up to every trick in the book but, nevertheless, Ben felt his cock getting hard.

‘I love America,’ he sang as he made his way to the bedroom. The cheerleader was on her hands and knees, arse aloft. Her skin was golden brown, soft and peachy.

‘Does that feel good?’ asked Ben, loving the feeling of her tight, young body.

‘Oh … Yeeees … Oh, Benny … I’ve never done this before … Ohhhh …’

If she was telling the truth, she was half his age, and just for a split second he felt ever so slightly like a dirty old man. Then he refocused. Christ, she was hot.

And so was he.

Driving up the freeway en route to meet Belinda at Chateau Marmont (it was difficult to express how much he loved the LA cliché), Ben turned up the radio, which was playing the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

Californication.

He laughed, and for the second time that day thought of Damian, thinking how much he’d have enjoyed the serendipity. He put the idea firmly out of his mind and dwelt instead on nubile nymphets, fame, fortune, blue skies and palm trees. A pretty brunette in a white convertible lifted her shades to get a better look at him. She kissed her fingers and clutched her heart, feigning undying love. He clocked the rings on her fingers and blew a kiss back. Then he put his foot on the gas.

Modelled in the 1920s on a chateau in the Loire Valley, the Chateau Marmont was still the ultimate byword for hedonistic glamour. As Ben walked out of the lobby towards the pool, he could feel the cloisters themselves oozing their Tinseltown, rock’n’roll heritage. The stars who had stayed under this roof included Judy Garland, John Belushi (who had OD’d here, poor bugger), Vivien Leigh, Jim Morrison, Jean Harlow, Led Zep … The roll call was as bibulous as it was illustrious. He continued through beautifully fragrant and lush gardens until he’d reached the pool, which was surrounded by even lusher plants, and tables shaded by black-and-white stripy parasols.

‘Ben! My handsomest client, looking sexier than ever. If I didn’t know you better, I’d think you’d just had a pretty piece of LA ass!’

Belinda winked and Ben laughed. Was it really so obvious?

His agent didn’t look like the hard-nosed bitch whose reputation preceded her, even the other side of the Atlantic. In fact, when he’d first met her, he’d wondered if he’d walked into the wrong office. Belinda, who was probably in her mid-forties, though it was hard to tell, contrived an air of luxe hippy softness, in the Rachel Zoe/Nicole Richie mode. Her golden hair was loose and tousled around her shoulders – a casual California style that cost at least $1,000 a month to maintain. She wore a simple spaghetti-strapped maxidress in a splashy floral silk, flat tan leather sandals, wooden bangles stacked up her sinewy, Bikram-yoga’d arms, dangly vintage silver-and-turquoise earrings and the most enormous pair of shades Ben had ever seen.

‘Looking pretty bloody gorgeous yourself, darling.’ Playing up the posh-Brit thing hadn’t done Hugh Grant or Rupert Everett any harm, after all.

The pool wasn’t as big as he’d imagined, but Lindsay Lohan was swigging from a bottle of tequila on a black-and-white-striped sun lounger, bitching into her BlackBerry about ‘that asshole who calls himself my dad’, and one of Keith Richards’ daughters was having her photo taken for a magazine shoot. Belinda had wanted to meet him at Café M on Melrose, the hottest new health-food café, insisting that Chateau Marmont was for wannabes, but Ben wanted to live the full LA dream. Besides, he wanted a real drink, somewhere he wouldn’t be accused of being an ‘alcoholic Brit’.

He sat down opposite his agent.

‘I guess you want something alcoholic?’ she sighed.

‘Well, a cocktail would be nice.’ He gave her his most winning smile. ‘What’re you drinking?’

‘Iced green tea with ginseng. You should try it sometime.’ He did his little-boy-lost look and she laughed. Belinda was just as susceptible to his charms as every other female on the planet.

‘Hey, I’ll let you off this time.’ She put a hand weighed down with cocktail rings on his arm. ‘And I’ll have whatever you’re having. We may have something to celebrate.’

‘What?’ Ben felt an enormous jolt of excitement. ‘Why, what’s happened?’

‘Don’t get your hopes up too quickly, handsome boy,’ said Belinda, loving the power she had over him. ‘Let’s wait for the drinks.’

It was agonizing waiting until the waiter (a ‘resting actor’, good looking but not nearly as fit as Ben – which was presumably why he was resting) came back with their Margaritas. But Ben feigned nonchalance, complimenting Belinda on her body and business acumen.

‘Well,’ she eventually drawled. ‘Paramount are casting a new movie. It’s gonna be huge, they say, but they always say that …’

‘What’s it about?’

‘The South of France in the 1950s. Saint-Tropez, Bardot, you know.’

‘Oh, cool. And I love that part of the world. I went backpacking along the Riviera with all my drama-school mates in the college holidays ten years ago.’ It was more like fifteen, but Belinda didn’t need to know that. ‘Nice, Antibes, Juan Les Pins, just so we could get a glimpse of the stars at Cannes.’ He remembered them all smoking dope and drinking cheap wine out of their rucksacks on the beach, assuring one another that they’d be up there one day. If they could see me now, that little gang of mine …

‘You European kids,’ said Belinda, slightly wistfully. ‘So much culture at your fingertips. Anyway, Cannes is the cynical premise behind this venture. The producers think that a movie based on its doorstep might get those uptight bastards to sit up and take some notice of something produced by a MAJOR studio, for once, instead of one of those fall-asleep-in-your-popcorn subtitled crapolas where everybody, like, dies.’ She made a gesture that combined an extravagant yawn with slitting her throat.

Ben laughed easily. He was amazed by his own patience.

‘And? Do they want to see me, or what?’

‘Oh, honey, of course they want to see you. I wouldn’t be telling you all this now would I, if they didn’t? What kind of a woman do you think I am?’

She pouted and Ben refrained from telling her.

‘It’s a period romcom, along the lines of To Catch A Thief.’

Ben wasn’t sure how Hitchcock would have reacted to one of his classics being referred to as a period romcom, but he let it pass.

‘So you mean, I’m up for the Cary Grant character?’ It was difficult to keep the excitement out of his voice.

‘Get real, handsome. They’ll only go with a proper, American star for the good guy.’ Wasn’t Belinda aware that Cary Grant was originally from Bristol? ‘No, you’re the bastard Brit who messes with our heroine’s heart.’

‘Silly me.’ Ben laughed again. ‘We Englishmen are always the villains. But, bloody hell, Belinda, that is amazing! When do they want me to read for it? And who are they thinking of for the lead roles?’

‘They haven’t decided yet for the lead, but maybe Scarlett Johansson or Amanda Seyfried for the girl. Somebody suggested Gwynnie, but she’s way too old of course.’

As Gwyneth Paltrow was about the same age as him, Ben nodded solemnly.

‘And they want to see you in two days’ time, so brush up on your French.’

‘Mate, that’s amazing news,’ said Tom, one of Ben’s new ex-pat buddies, a trust-fund twat who had moved to LA to write a screenplay, thinking that anyone could do it. As he could neither spell nor string two sentences together, Ben thought it unlikely Tom’s masterpiece would ever see the light of day. But he did mean well.

They were at Soho House LA, with all the other Brits who liked to stick together.

‘But promise us you won’t turn native!’ bellowed Julia, an actress who’d been very successful in London three years ago but had yet to hit the big time Stateside. Possibly on account of a weak chin and a slightly-too-large nose that she’d refused to get fixed, vainly (and stupidly) thinking her work as a ‘serious actress’ rendered such measures unnecessary. ‘We don’t want you to start saying “Lie-sesster Square”!’

Everyone cracked up, and Ben pretended to too, but inside he was thinking, If you don’t like it here, then why don’t you fuck off back to London? He was growing a little tired of his fellow ex-pats, with their twee insistence on tea parties, and Sunday roasts, when it was far too hot to eat anything other than the innovatively healthy (and surprisingly delicious) fresh produce on offer locally. These people would have been the first to sneer at Brits in Benidorm demanding the full English breakfast, so why the fuck did they think it was OK in LA?

They were sitting on the roof terrace, underneath a silvery olive tree, drinking vodkatinis. Ben swivelled his head to take in the 360-degree view. LA at night sprawled, glittering and full of promise, beneath and all around him. Somewhere to his right, the gated mansions of Beverly Hills beckoned, in all their opulent splendour. One day …

‘Two nations, divided by a common language!’ Julia guffawed, and tried to sit on his lap, but even though she’d lost the Brit blubber and was now the requisite size two, she represented the weight of his past, and he wanted her off him. He got up, nearly sending her flying, and said, ‘I’ve got to get an early night. Big day the day after tomorrow. ’Bye guys! Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do!’

Julia looked offended, as well she might. She had been his first contact in LA (they’d been at RADA together), and he’d shagged her to get in with the ex-pat crowd.

As he walked out into the jasmine-scented summer night air, he heard Julia saying, ‘I do hope he’s not going to get too big for his boots now.’

Outside, he lit an illicit fag. He still wasn’t quite sure why fags and booze were so frowned upon in California when dope was legal, but he was willing to toe the line most of the time when so much was at stake. As he put his lighter back in his jeans pocket, he felt a piece of card and took it out.

Jennifer Jackson. Nutritionist and personal trainer.

He recalled the girl with the dreadlocks, smile and fantastic arse. Now, she would be a way forward. He’d had enough of his previous life and the no-hoper Brits weighing him down. He thought for a second, then took out his phone and dialled the number on the card.

‘Who is it?’ A very cross-sounding voice eventually answered.

‘Hi, Jenny, it’s Ben. We met on the beach today—’

‘Oh, for God’s sakes. Don’t you know what time it is? If you want to talk about training, call me in the morning.’

And she put the phone down on him. Ben wasn’t sure that any woman had done that to him in his life before. He rather liked it.

‘Jenny, hi, it’s Ben. We met on the beach yesterday.’ He put on his poshest RADA accent.

‘Oh my. The Brit who woke me up at midnight?’

Ben chuckled in what he hoped was an endearing manner.

‘Mea culpa, I’m afraid.’

‘Well, I hope you’ll make it worth my while.’ She sounded crosser than ever. ‘I only had four hours’ sleep because of you. I was training Tom Hanks at five a.m.’

‘Oh, fuck, I’m so sorry,’ said Ben. ‘Tom Hanks, really?’

‘Of course I wasn’t training Tom Hanks, you British idiot. Do ya think I’d be handing out my card on the beach if I was Tom Hanks’s trainer?’

Ben laughed sheepishly.

‘No, I suppose not.’

‘So, d’ya want me to train you, or are you just gonna annoy me with late-night calls? Your abs could do with some work. But it’ll cost ya. And nobody calls me Jenny. My name is Jennifer.’

Bitch. My abs are fine, thought Ben, stroking his washboard stomach. But he definitely wanted to see her again.

‘I thank you.’

Natalia smiled graciously as she accepted her champagne and caviar from the BA stewardess. She was flying from Heathrow to Kiev on her annual June trip to check up on the two charities to which she had been contributing generously for years. After her mamushka had died, there had been no real reason to go back home, but she had to make sure her money was being put to good use.

At least she had the luxury of being able to choose which time of year to return, she thought, pulling her cashmere blanket a little more tightly around her shoulders to keep out the chill of the air conditioning. Despite its soft warmth, she shivered as the memories of Ukraine in the depths of winter came flooding back …

‘Madam? Can I get you something else?’ asked the stewardess, looking at Natalia oddly.

‘Excuse me?’ Natalia was snapped back into the present, into the softness of her White Company cashmere blanket, so different to the itchy wool she had wrapped herself up in all those years ago. ‘No, no, I thank you, I am fine.’

Once the stewardess had left her alone once more, she stared out of the window for some time, unwelcome tears blurring her view of the pillowy white clouds below.

Chapter 4

Poppy Wallace’s bite of the Big Apple is somewhat larger than she’d initially anticipated.

Bella looked at Poppy’s Facebook update with love and irritation. It wasn’t Poppy per se who bugged the shit out of her, but all her old London media friends who fell on her every word and tried to outdo themselves with how well they knew her and how cool they could prove themselves to everyone else online. Some of the fawning acolytes responded to Poppy’s Facebook update with such stomach-churning stuff as miss u loads, baby girl (from a female journalist – there was loads of faux-dykey bollocks) and hoxton’s not the same without you, sweet poppy lops. remember OBESE-gate?

Bella was tempted to add, remember OVERDOSE-gate? She wasn’t able to be cool on Facebook, as some of her old friends and family members actually used exclamation marks and plenty of xxxxs at the end of their messages. It seemed rude not to respond in kind. Also, as Andy worked late so many evenings, she found herself drinking wine on her own and writing things she thought hilarious at the time, then waking in a cold sweaty panic, wondering what the fuck she had thought essential to share with absolutely everyone who knew her. The computer needed a Breathalyser.

She clicked onto Poppy’s latest photos: rollerblading in Central Park, gorgeous in old-skool grey marl shorts and Yankees T-shirt; drinking at the round table at the Algonquin Hotel in a flapper dress (cue comment from fawning female journo: you are Dorothy Parker, but a million times prettier – nineteen other equally sycophantic comments followed); sunbathing by the pool on Soho House NY’s roof terrace in a green bikini that matched her eyes and showed off her exquisitely lithe body (wowser! looking hot babe, hubba hubba, etc., etc., ad nauseam); sitting on the stoop of some lovely old brownstone house in rolled-up jeans and sneakers, her hair in an insouciant ponytail, reading the Herald Tribune (her comment on her own photo was clever, cool and abstruse).

Bella looked out of the window. At nearly half-past eight the sun hadn’t yet set, but it wouldn’t have made any difference if it had, she thought morosely. The English summer, which, by some freakish Act of God, had been so wonderful last year, had reverted to its usual depressing, drizzly self. She reminded herself to snap out of it. Her day had started with some great sex and she still loved Andy so much she barely even looked at other men any more. Well, she looked, but she wasn’t tempted. She didn’t have to go to vile offices, was paid pretty handsomely for her painting, and her life was, just about, perfect.

Yet … It was just the bloody weather, she told herself, and a niggling loneliness. One of the reasons she loved Andy so much was his innate goodness, which manifested itself in his dedication to his work, but sometimes she wished more of that dedication could be sent her way. Like coming home in time for dinner.

She clicked onto Poppy’s next photo, in which she was giggling with loads of people Bella didn’t know, in a club that was probably the Studio 54 du jour. Damian was conspicuous by his absence. Bella hoped that all was well with them. She opened another bottle of wine and started to think about all the fun she’d had in the past. She used to be that clubbing chick, the one with the cool photos and funny stories.

Then her phone beeped.

Bella my love, I’m outside. So sorry I’ve been neglecting you. Bloody job. I love you! Come down. Anything you want to eat and drink is on me, wherever you want to go. And everything you want me to do to you, I’ll do double. Triple. Xxxxxxx

Bella looked out of the window and saw Andy, arms outstretched, smiling up at her. Her heart soared as she ran down the rickety steps of her flat and realized she wouldn’t trade any of her hedonistic, uncertain past for what she had with him, right now.

‘I mean, I love her, you know I do, but it’s just so fucking annoying!’ Bella looked over her glass of Pouilly-Fumé at Andy. They were in her favourite restaurant, The Wolseley. Enormous iron chandeliers glowed overhead, the excited hum of chatter buzzed around her, she was with her favourite person in the whole world. Yet her second favourite dish in the whole world (moules marinières; spaghetti vongole was her first, but they didn’t do it here) lay practically untouched in front of her.

‘Poppy’s life is just so bloody exciting, and EVERYONE loves her!’

‘I don’t love her.’ Andy leant across the white linen’d table and held both Bella’s hands in his. ‘In fact, I think she’s a self-centred pain in the arse, but I do love you.’

Bella smiled and kissed both his hands.

‘Thanks and sorry. I love you too.’

‘Not bored with me already, are you?’ He said it lightly, but Bella could tell he meant it.

‘I’ll never be bored with you, my love. I just sometimes get a bit bored with life in grey old London, with its endless depressing news, when everybody else seems to be having so much fun, in such exotic places. Bloody Facebook.’

‘You spend far more time on that site than is healthy, my darling. And let’s look at it mathematically: you have – what? – 350-odd Facebook “friends”?’ Andy did the inverted commas fingers signal and Bella nodded, slightly shamefaced.

‘Most of us go on holiday at least once a year, so let’s divide that by twelve.’

‘Um – nearly thirty people on holiday every month?’

‘Exactly! It may look as if everyone is having the times of their lives on beaches or mountains, while we’re stuck in dreary old London, but it’s a snare and a delusion. We were in Ibiza only a couple of months ago, after all.’

‘Oh, I know, I know, I’m being horribly spoilt.’ Bella sighed and took another swig of her wine. ‘But Poppy IS getting her huge bite of the Big Apple, even during this horrid recession. I don’t know why I can’t be more pleased for her.’ In the old days she’d have been happy, unreservedly, for Poppy, but ever since the Ben thing, something sour had crept in. She had loved helping her plan the wedding, and the nuptials themselves had been wonderful, of course, but this new, extra level of success was a little galling.

Six weeks earlier, three weeks after Poppy and Damian had returned from their honeymoon in Cuba, Stadium had folded, the latest victim of the recession. Simon Snell had immediately found another job on Esquire, but Poppy had put a spanner in Damian’s job-seeking by simultaneously being offered a promotion in New York. And it wasn’t just any old promotion. One of her company’s proper big shots had been visiting from New York, taken one look at Poppy and decided that she was wasted behind the camera. With her gamine beauty, quick-wittedness and sarcastic London cool, the Big Shot was hoping Poppy would be the new Alexa Chung, presenting a quirky magazine/documentary-type show – an English girl’s take on the Big Apple.

Damian, not wanting to be apart from his new wife so early in their marriage (and, Bella thought, probably still not entirely trusting her, left to her own devices in an exciting new city), had bravely decided to take his chances at freelancing in New York. Stadium had left him with plenty of contacts, after all.

‘I hope Damian’s getting on OK,’ said Andy, and Bella grimaced.

‘Not much good for his ego if he’s not.’

‘No,’ said Andy. ‘And we both know what his professional ego can be like when wounded. So enough of the Poppy jealousy, OK? Would you want to be in her shoes, constantly reassuring Damian that he’s cleverer than her, while he mopes about, sulking all day, in what I imagine is their vast warehouse apartment?’

Bella laughed. ‘That’s such a vivid image! S’pose not.’ She was smiling broadly now, as Andy’s foot, which had been rubbing her leg all night, had made its way up to her knickers.

‘Aren’t you going to finish your mussels?’ Andy smiled into her eyes, increasing the pressure of his foot.

‘I’d rather you finished my muscles at home.’

The next morning, Bella woke around nine a.m. and stretched contentedly. She still loved the fact she would never again be rudely awoken by a shrill alarm signalling another dreary day in another dreary office. She felt much happier today. The sun was shining through muslin curtains, Andy was wonderful, her life was wonderful, everything was wonderful. She pottered about at a leisurely pace, putting the radio on and making herself a cup of tea. She filled her pretty eau-de-nil watering can and went out onto her balcony to water her window boxes. This little daily act gave her a disproportionate amount of pleasure. Her mint and chives were coming along a treat. She kissed her fingers and patted the plants.

‘Grow, my babies, grow.’ She was glad nobody could see her and wondered if this might be a sign of broodiness. She certainly didn’t yearn for a baby right now. She was perfectly happy with things just as they were, and although she knew she wanted one eventually, and reckoned Andy would make a great father, she had no intention of rocking the boat.

Though her flat was really much too small for two, and she and Andy had talked about selling it and buying somewhere bigger, she loved it too much to leave quite yet. The crappy property market was as good an excuse as any, and Andy was still paying off the enormous loan he’d taken out to pay for his wedding to Alison last year, which had been called off at the last minute. The fact that Alison had been shagging her boss, so it should have been her financial responsibility, still rankled with Bella, but Andy was a slave to his tiresome principles.

By the time she’d showered, dressed, made the bed (arranging and plumping up all the artfully mismatched cushions exactly to her satisfaction) and read a chapter or two of her book over a boiled egg and thickly buttered toast, it was nearly midday. Guiltily, Bella shut the book. There wouldn’t be time for her run now – she’d booked her jointly rented studio for 12.30. She couldn’t imagine how she’d ever managed to get up in time to arrive, bad-tempered and dishevelled, at whichever horrible office she’d been temping at for a nine-a.m.-prompt start. Actually, the promptness had happened rarely, if ever. She felt another surge of happiness that those days were over.

As she walked towards the door and automatically checked herself out in the mirror next to it, she stopped and shook her head in dissatisfaction. Something was wrong. Bella had longish legs and a larger than average bust for her 5 foot 7, size 10/12 frame (despite slender ankles, wrists and shoulders, she always felt like a bloody carthorse next to Poppy). She’d had vague hopes of channelling Audrey Hepburn today in high ponytail, black Capri pants and a boat-necked, horizontally striped T-shirt. From her shoulders up she looked great, the ponytail and boat neck setting off her collarbones, high cheekbones and big brown eyes a treat. Audrey was not an entirely preposterous idea. Her legs were fine in the Capri pants.

But in between – oh, dear. The horizontal stripes made her bust look vast (and not in a good way – matronly was the word that sprang to mind). And for fuck’s sake, was she starting to develop a paunch? She supposed it was possible, with the ongoing eating and drinking of happy coupledom, and her increasing laziness when it came to exercise. She promised herself that she would hit the procrastinating on the head as she went back into her bedroom to change. Tomorrow she would definitely get up in time for her run.

Bella eventually arrived at Westbourne Studios at 1.30 p.m.

‘Yah, Daddy’s just given me and Jazz a mil each to buy a flat, but you can’t get anything decent round here for that sort of money,’ Sienna was saying into her iPhone as Bella walked into her time-share studio. ‘Oh, hi, Bella.’ She smiled and waved a thin, wafty hand.

Ludicrously overprivileged and good-looking, Sienna Sax-Hoffmann was studying History of Art at London University. She had told Bella that her father wanted her to have a bolthole for her studies, when ‘the Uni library gets too much. Dear Daddy, he can be so overprotective, but it’s rather fun having one’s own studio three mornings a week, don’t you think?’ Sienna only actually managed to get up in time to play on the Internet in her studio once a week, at most, but Bella didn’t hold that against her (well, how could she?). She found Sienna rather sweet. Perhaps it was because she was so pretty. Bella knew that with her artistic eye, she always gave people who were easy on it less of a hard time than those who repulsed her physically – male or female. She wasn’t particularly proud of this.

Sienna was about 5 foot 10, skinny as a catwalk model with an eating disorder, and pale as milk. Her naturally white-blonde hair cascaded in long waves around a coolly patrician face, all angular bones and huge, bruised, dark blue eyes. She played up her delicate appearance with fey, floaty, vintage garments, today looking breathtakingly fragile in a cream lacy maxidress, pearl choker (probably real) and jewelled flip-flops that showed off her narrow pedicured feet. Bella imagined that your average man’s unimaginative, testosterone-driven protective instincts would go into overdrive at the sight of her.

‘Hi, Bella.’ Sienna smiled as she put her phone down. ‘You’re late.’

‘I know. Never been much good at punctuality.’ Bella smiled back as she started setting up her easel.

‘I should be off then. D’you want me to pay you back for the extra hour? Not really fair for you to cough up for when you’re not here. Daddy can easily afford it …’ Sienna started and Bella laughed.

‘My lateness isn’t your dad’s fault, sweetie. Nope, this is my punishment for being the past-mistress of pissing about.’

Sienna laughed too. ‘Well, you’d better make the most of what time you’ve got left then.’ She looked out of the window and groaned. ‘Oh, Goooood. Bloody Josh is out there again. I swear that boy is stalking me.’

Bella followed her gaze. Sitting at the wheel of a convertible red Porsche was a baby-faced boy of immeasurably arrogant demeanour. If the car wasn’t clue enough, everything about his appearance screamed money – from the slicked-back dark brown hair and ruddy pink cheeks to the immaculately faded jeans and butter-soft leather jacket. While this might conceivably have had some allure on an older man, on a boy of barely 21 it was both loathsome and faintly ludicrous.

‘He is sooooo uncool.’ Sienna rolled her eyes at Bella as she picked up her vintage lace parasol. ‘He hangs out at places like Whisky Mist and Mahiki, trying to suck up to Harry Wales. He’s thick as pigshit too – God knows how he got into King’s. But he’s so loaded he’s got half the boring wannabe Sloanes at college eating out of his hand.’

If Sienna thought he was loaded, reflected Bella, the baby-faced Josh must be rich as Croesus. Certain sectors of society had yet to be hit by the recession, it seemed.

‘Toby, shut up, you fucker! You’re such a fucking loser!’

‘Cretin! Thunder thighs! Fatso!’

‘Loser! Wankstain! Fuckwit! Toby’s a fuckwit, Toby’s a fuckwit!’

Alison put her fingers in her ears and tried to ignore the screaming bickering of her teenage almost stepchildren as she concentrated on the details of the latest horrible case she was working on. You’d think the classically (some might say boringly) wood-panelled, leather-upholstered study would be soundproof, but no. Their spoilt, public-school, brattish voices, an entire floor up, would probably pierce the thick concrete walls of a torture cell (the like of which the creeps she was defending would doubtless end up in, if she didn’t sufficiently deploy the Human Rights Act).

Alison was meant to have married Andy last year. They’d been together for thirteen years, ever since Cambridge, and it had seemed like a logical progression. But she’d become so caught up in the minutiae of organizing the perfect wedding, and keeping her bloody parents happy, that she’d lost sight of the fact that, somewhere along the line, they had fallen out of love with one another. When her older boss Philip, senior partner in her law firm, came on to her one night they were both working late, she’d felt properly alive again for the first time in years. They’d actually fucked on his desk. The age gap suited them both – it made Philip feel virile and Alison desired – something Andy hadn’t managed at all in the last few years of their relationship, though he’d done his best to pretend. And the Eaton Square house was the pinnacle of her grandiose domestic aspirations.

She hadn’t reckoned with the bloody teenagers though.

‘LOSER, LOSER, LOSER, LOSER, LOSER!’ Now they were stamping, banging on the floor above, to the extent she was worried the ceiling might fall in. Something sounded like gunshot. Little sods. She took a deep breath and ventured upstairs, to the room directly above her study – their playroom. For God’s sake, at their age.

Toby was shooting an air rifle out of the window, trying to kill pigeons, while Imogen and one of her horrible little friends bounced around the room on state-of-the-art pogo sticks. They were all so bloody spoilt that neither of her parents had the nerve to tell Imogen that cropped leggings weren’t the best option for her chunky little legs.

‘Children.’ Alison tried to smile.

Toby turned around, pointing the air rifle right at her.

‘Children,’ he drawled sarcastically. ‘Yes, what is it, wicked step-mummy?’

Both girls cracked up. Alison flinched away from the gun and tried to keep her temper.

‘Could you just keep the noise down a bit, please? I’m trying to work …’

‘Trying?’ brayed Imogen, tossing her dyed-yellow hair. ‘Well, you probably need to try a bit harder then, don’t you?’

‘Hahahaha! Oh, Imo, you’re so funny!’ spluttered her equally obnoxious (though not so blubbery) friend.

Never the most patient of women at the best of times, Alison snapped, ‘Just shut up, you little bastards …’

‘Really, Alison,’ came a mild voice from behind her. ‘I’m sure it’s not necessary to speak to my children like that.’

‘Dadddddeeeee!’ shouted Imogen, running as fast as her fat little legs would carry her. She launched herself into her father’s arms, as though she were 4, not 14.

‘Darling!’ Philip swung her up and round in the air. Alison was amazed he didn’t rupture himself. He put Imogen down and saluted his son, who had hidden the air rifle behind his bespoke pool table.

‘All shipshape, captain?’

‘All shipshape, sir.’ Toby saluted back, grinning.

‘Righty-ho. Well, as it’s half-term, who’s up for Pizza Express?’

‘Oh, Daddy, you’re the best!’ Imogen snuggled up to him.

‘I was going to cook coq au vin,’ started Alison, even though she hated cooking.

‘Darling, I thought I’d give you a break from the kitchen. It’s not exactly your forte, is it?’ Philip winked at Imogen, who giggled.

As Alison walked wearily downstairs after them all, Toby turned round and gave her the finger, glee written all over his smug, spotty little face.

Chapter 5

‘Owwww!’ screamed Poppy as Fabrice pulled the first strip of wax from her nose. She scowled at him in the mirror. ‘Surely this isn’t necessary? Of all the things I’ve ever been accused of, having a hairy nose isn’t one of them.’

‘Welcome to Manhattan grooming, Blondie.’

As the pain ebbed away, Poppy tried to smile, aware that it was important to keep the people behind the scenes on your side in this business. And it wasn’t actually Fabrice’s fault – he was only doing his job, after all.

‘Sorry – just haven’t got used to it yet. And these ridiculously early starts. How on earth do you do it?’ This week they were shooting the coolest places for power breakfasts and weekend brunches, a deliciously New York concept. That said, it was six a.m., Poppy had already been up for an hour and she still had Hair and Make-up to go. She was looking forward to the week they did cocktail bars.

Poppy’s bosses had taken a huge punt in giving her, a complete unknown, such an enormous slice of airtime. Half an hour, Monday to Thursday nights at ten p.m., for twelve weeks. The later time meant that Poppy could be a little more risqué and attract younger, cooler viewers. Every week there was a different theme on Poppy Takes Manhattan. This week, breakfasts and brunches; last week, vintage clothes stores; the week before, hotels with roof terraces. To stay bang on trend, the programmes were broadcast the week after they’d been shot (so this week they were showing the vintage clothes store episodes, Poppy’s favourites so far).

Already the show was gathering a loyal following. Poppy was proving to be a natural in front of the camera, chatty and conspiratorial without ever patronizing the viewer. She’d wondered how Americans would take to an English girl telling them what was cool on their territory, so she played up the fact that she was an outsider, acting delighted and awestruck with every new gem she discovered (most of the time she didn’t have to act much). It worked. The natives lapped it up. The show was due to be broadcast in the UK later in the year, and Poppy hoped she’d go down equally well with British audiences.

‘Haven’t been to bed yet.’ Fabrice tapped the side of his own ink-black, perfectly waxed nose. He probably should have paid a little more attention to his nostrils though, both of which were ever so slightly crusty.

‘Ooooh – where’ve you been?’ Poppy was always eager to hear about others’ debauchery, but now she could actually indulge in her passion for gossip in the name of research. This job really, really couldn’t be better. She knew how lucky she was and was working like a trouper to show her gratitude.

‘Where haven’t I been?’ Fabrice winked, and Poppy giggled at him in the mirror. She did like the way she looked, even with a smarting red nose.

‘Oh, my screaming Andy Warhols, you are just sooooo cute. If I had even an atomo of hetero hormones, I would be up your tiny tight pussy faster than HIV in a seventies ’Frisco sauna!’

‘Wow, thanks … I think. So, Fab, take me through your night. I want to hear it all – bars, restaurants, clubs, the lot!’

By the time Fabrice had hilariously and indiscreetly told all, Poppy felt they might be friends for life. The final wax strip barely stung.

Make-up passed without a hitch – New Yorkers didn’t want to look like footballers’ wives, after all – and she emerged looking like an even better version of herself (if that were possible). But ensconced in Hair, Poppy had a battle on her hands.

‘Um … I’m sure you know your job far better than I do …’ She smiled winningly at the latest addition to her hairdressing team.

‘I do.’ Jojo, a terrifyingly well-groomed middle-aged redhead, didn’t smile back.

‘It’s just that, if I’m meant to be the cool Anglo chick around town, I wouldn’t be all blow-dried to within an inch of my life like this. I mean, my hair’s always been a bit messy …’

‘U-huh.’ Only New Yorkers could imbue so few syllables with such disdain. Jojo pulled a golden lock even harder around the round brush. Poppy tried to stay friendly.

‘… and I think that’s kind of what they wanted – you know, for me to keep my – erm – unkempt London essence?’

‘If you think I am letting you out in front of those cameras looking how you looked before, then you are mistaken, Brit chick,’ said Jojo grimly. ‘It’s my reputation on the line here.’

Poppy smiled back sweetly, knowing she’d mess up the Stepford blow-dry as soon as she was out of the Nazi bitch’s hands. It was her hair, and she’d wear it as she bloody well pleased.

Damian stared at his laptop morosely. Still no new messages, unless you counted the endless press releases and PR guff that flooded his inbox daily, as an ex-important journo (he was amazed they didn’t update their files more frequently and put him in the box marked useless). It wouldn’t hurt any of the editors he’d approached to at least acknowledge receipt of his features’ ideas. A ‘thanks but no thanks’ would be preferable to the interminable silence. Apart from anything else it was bloody bad manners. He wasn’t some unknown hack, he was a former Stadium columnist, for fuck’s sake. And he knew most of the editors personally – they had all drunk and snorted together at many a press hooley.

Oh, well. He tried not to let it get to him as he got up off his sun lounger. Wandering over to the bar, he marvelled at the number of New Yorkers able to hang out on Soho House’s roof terrace in the middle of the day, in the middle of the week. He imagined that a lot of them were, like him, newly unemployed. Recent victims of the recession. He laughed at himself. Victim wasn’t quite the right word, not when you still had enough dosh for Soho House membership. And he wasn’t the only one grabbing the opportunity to go freelance, which definitely had its perks. Networking in the sunshine over a cocktail or two wasn’t such a bad way to spend your days.

Damian ordered another Manhattan. It seemed appropriate.

‘I’ve got a tab. Um. It’s in my wife’s name. She’s the member.’

Was the bartender ostentatiously hiding a smirk?

‘And your wife’s name, sir?’

‘Poppy Evans-Wallace.’

He knew he was being childish. Poppy had insisted on keeping her maiden name for anything professional, which he was fine with really. That was how she was known in the TV world, after all. As it happened, the barman didn’t even seem to notice the insertion of Evans, as he gave a little yelp.

‘Poppy Wallace? Omigod, I just love her, she’s so cute. They were filming here just a couple weeks back. That show’s gonna be a cult classic, y’know. Have the drink with the compliments of the house, sir.’

‘Thank you.’ Damian smiled, his heart swelling with pride. Even he, who probably loved and admired Poppy more than anybody in the world, hadn’t foreseen her new show being quite such a success. All he had to do was emulate some of that success himself and they’d be sorted. He took his drink from the bartender, thanking him again, and walked back to his sun lounger, fired up and full of fresh resolve to crack New York.

Opening his emails again, he saw there was a new one from Simon Snell, from his Esquire address. His heart quickened as he opened it. Surely, Simon, of all people, would respond positively to at least one of the pitches Damian had sent him?

I’m really sorry mate, but with this bloody recession we’re just not commissioning from freelancers at the minute. Of course we’ve got to fill the mag somehow, so everybody with a salary is working twice as hard for their filthy lucre – I haven’t left the office before 9 since I started here. Not that that’s much comfort to you, I imagine. They were fucking good ideas though. Have you tried GQ? Their budget is massive compared to ours. Hope you’re having fun in NY – I see it’s 90 in the shade today. It’s raining here. Plus ça change. BTW I’ve heard Poppy’s show’s going down a storm – please give her my congratulations. Sorry about the feature ideas, but I’m sure something will come up soon. Courage, mon ami and au revoir x

Damian took a large swig of his Manhattan, mulling everything over. Of course he’d tried GQ – UK and US versions. Simon must have realized that. Also, since Poppy’s fling with Ben last year, it was very unlike Simon to say anything nice about her – though his Best Man’s speech, delivered through gritted teeth, Damian suspected, had been charm itself. His professional situation had to be bad, he concluded. So what to do? If even Simon couldn’t pull any freelancing strings for him, he needed another project to get his teeth into. Hmmm. Maybe he could write a screenplay?

Excited now as much by his new idea as the two Manhattans and blazing sunshine, Damian opened a new document in Word and saved it as SCREENPLAY. Then he stared at the empty page for a few minutes. Hmmm, he thought again. He probably needed another drink for inspiration. He drained the dregs of his Manhattan and made his way back to the bar for the third time that hour.

‘Same again, sir?’ The bartender was positively effusive this time, flashing Damian a cheeky grin as he started preparing another Manhattan. ‘Hey,’ he added, to an enormous blond man standing next to Damian, ‘this lucky guy is married to that cute Brit chick with the new TV show. Y’know, Poppy Wallace? The one they were all raving about last night?’

‘Dude, that is cool,’ said the Viking in a clearly Scandinavian accent, turning to pump Damian by the hand so hard his teeth rattled. ‘She is one hot chick. I’m Larsh.’

‘Damian.’ He shook back enthusiastically. ‘And thanks for the comments, both of you. Poppy’s even more gorgeous in the flesh. She’s really clever too.’ He was starting to feel a tad sentimental. This bartender mixed his drinks strong.

‘I’m sure she ish, man, sure she ish.’ Lars was slurring a little and Damian realized he was in the company of a fellow boozer. Excellent. Damian himself wasn’t generally a lunchtime drinker, but with so much time on his hands he was finding it very easy to slip into, and curiously enjoyable. He looked properly at his new companion for the first time.

Everything about Lars was huge, from his head to his hands to his feet, but he wasn’t fat. Just … HUGE. Piercing blue eyes looked out from a good-natured, square face, with a beaming smile that revealed big, square teeth.

‘Let me get you a drink,’ said Damian. ‘What are you having?’

‘Thank you, man.’ Lars slapped Damian on the back, nearly propelling him over the bar. ‘I am drinking schnapps.’

‘Sounds great. I think I’ll join you. Two very large schnapps, please, and have one for yourself, mate,’ Damian added to the barman. ‘It’s on my wife’s tab.’ All three men roared with laughter at this. The barman gave Damian the Manhattan he’d just mixed (which Damian proceeded to down in one, belching slightly), then swiftly poured three absurdly large tumblers of neat schnapps.

Lars raised his glass and bellowed, ‘SKOL!’

‘SKOL!’ shouted Damian and the barman. They poured the drinks down their throats and the barman happily started to prepare another round.

‘So if you want your eggs sunny-side up in east Manhattan, I couldn’t recommend a better place.’ Poppy winked at the camera. ‘And I have to say this sunny-side East Side is an awful lot more sunny – and, dare I say it – up than the grey old East End I left behind me in London. They have jellied eels in the East End of London, you know, and they are just as revolting as they sound!’

She felt a bit guilty about her disloyalty to her beloved ’hood, but hey. Business was business. And jellied eels were revolting. She’d tried them once, for a bet, pissed as a fart as she staggered home from Dalston to Hoxton, clad only in a shocking-pink leotard and laddered purple tights; she’d managed somehow to lose her boots, hat and skirt en route. Poppy had, with an effort, kept the eels down; her fellow reveller, a minor rock star used to three grams of coke and a bottle of JD a night, had puked his guts up.

‘It’s a wrap!’ said Marty, the director.

‘Really?’ Poppy beamed at him. This was only her second take.

‘You’re a natural, honey. Go have some fun now. And don’t forget – eight p.m. at L’Ambassadeur tonight.’

‘How could I forget?’

As it was Thursday and they’d finished for the week, Marty had suggested that Poppy and Damian join him and his wife for drinks and dinner that evening at the hottest new restaurant in town. The assistant director and his boyfriend were going to be there too. ‘Thanks for this morning, Marty, you’re a star.’ Poppy kissed him on the cheek and Marty blushed, unable to know how to take this gorgeous yet apparently unaffected English girl, their new star in the making. She was a breath of fresh air, of that he was certain.

Once Poppy had wiped her face clean of the make-up (it might have looked natural on screen, but it felt beyond disgusting in this heat), she decided to go to Greenwich Village and hit all the vintage shops she’d been filming in last week. It was about time she bought some presents for her loved ones, and unless she was very much mistaken, the shops would be falling over themselves to give her a discount.

‘Poppy Wallace!’ Sandra, a 65-year-old ex-rock chick with madly teased peroxide hair, a ton of black eyeliner and a treasure trove of a clothes shop, greeted her warmly. She was wearing an original Biba minidress, turquoise tights and purple PVC over-the-knee boots. She looked rather wonderful. ‘Welcome back, doll! Since your show aired on Monday, I’ve quadrupled my takings!’

‘Really?’ Poppy’s delight was genuine. All she had done, after all, was get some cameramen in there, while Sandra had been building up this Aladdin’s cave for the last twenty years or so. ‘Oh, I’m so pleased for you. You deserve it. This place is to die for.’

The shop’s interior was a fabulous juxtaposition of rock chick and over-the-top girly. The walls were painted a grungy matte black and hung with framed album covers from the sixties and seventies – the Stones, Led Zep, Velvet Underground, New York Dolls. (‘It only goes on the wall if I screwed one of the band,’ Sandra had confided to camera last week, much to the entire production team’s delight.) Mingling with the album covers were beautifully stylized Vogue fashion illustrations from the twenties to the fifties.

The matte-black walls were offset by floorboards painted a glossy white and strewn with thick, fluffy sheepskin rugs. Either side of the shop window, sumptuously thick pale pink velvet curtains pooled luxuriously to the floor. Two ornate antique chandeliers glittered overhead, their light refracted against the black ceiling in ever-changing swirls by the disco glitter-ball rotating slowly over the pale pink painted Louis XVI escritoire that acted as the cash desk. Faux-French armchairs and chaises longues had been upholstered in animal print (leopard, zebra and cow), and the two longest walls were lined with rail upon rail of exquisite vintage clothes, ranging from Victoriana to the nineties – almost a century’s worth.

Overgrown exotic plants lurked in every corner, except for the one that housed the single, very comfortably sized changing room, curtained off in the same sumptuous pale pink velvet. Inside, a huge Venetian mirror was propped against one black wall and a leopard-print upholstered chaise longue lounged alluringly against the other.

‘Thanks, honey. Ya want some pot?’ Sandra offered Poppy the spliff she held between age-spotted, scarlet-tipped fingers.

‘Thanks, but I think I’ll pass today. I’m on a mission to shop! And not even for myself, which makes it so much better. Guilt free!’

‘I get where you’re coming from, baby doll. But surely you’ll want a couple pieces for yourself too?’ Sandra looked at Poppy in an almost coquettish manner and Poppy laughed.

‘Oh, go on, twist my arm then. Seriously though, I really want to get something nice for my best friend Bella. I put her through hell last year and she didn’t deserve it.’

Sandra knew better than to enquire further, except to ask about Bella’s size, shape and colouring. She rummaged amongst the rails and after some deliberation emerged with a Halston silk empire-line maxidress, circa 1977. It was a deep emerald green, with jewelled peacock feathers creeping up both the floor-sweeping hem and the thick halterneck ties.

‘Oh, my bloody God, you are a genius, Sandra! Really! I didn’t even tell you that all Bella’s favourite dresses have halternecks! She’s got lovely shoulders. She’ll absolutely love it!’ Poppy flung her arms around Sandra’s neck, and it had the same effect as it always did, on everybody. Sandra would be a little bit in love with Poppy for the rest of her life from now on.

‘Yessssshhhh, that is right, David.’ Lars tried to focus on his new best mate, his blue eyes substantially more glassy than piercing now.

‘Damian.’ Damian tried to pronounce his own name correctly.

It transpired that Lars had been living in the Big Apple for five years, ever since he’d been headhunted from Merrill Lynch in Stockholm at the age of 29. The previous year, along with about half of his fellow emerging market traders, he’d been unceremoniously dumped by the bank. And even less ceremoniously dumped by his girlfriend, a stunning 21-year-old Romanian, who, in retrospect, he realized, ‘loved the banker, not the man’. He repeated this phrase several times to Damian and the bartender.

‘She sounds like a complete bitch, dude,’ said Damian. ‘What you need is a proper woman with her own mind, and her own job, like my wife.’ He went all misty eyed for a second.

‘Wow, man, you are one lucky guy,’ said Lars. He put his enormous arms around Damian in the biggest, strangest (but somehow loveliest) man hug Damian had ever experienced.

‘More schnapps!’ shouted Damian, aware that there was something he was meant to be doing today, but not till an awful lot later. It was still broad daylight, so he had plenty of time …

‘Schnapps! Skol alcohol fer dom som tol!’ shouted Lars.

‘Skol alcohol … der molisotito … fom!’ shouted Damian and the barman.

After a moment’s thought, ‘Hey, dude?’ the bartender asked mildly. ‘What does that mean?’

At that the enormous Swede started to laugh so much he was crying, wiping his eyes with his oversized fingers. ‘It means … it means … cheers, alcohol … for those who can take it!’

Damian and the barman also started to laugh so much that great salty tears were pouring down their cheeks. Another macho group hug was in order.

After a bit, Lars said decisively, ‘And now we must shing. Ssshurely, you shing, my brotherssh?’

‘Karaoke? Hey, man, why not? I’ve finished my shift and probably lost my job anyway!’ said the good-natured barman, who Damian thought was called Tom or Tim (or possibly Jim). So they all piled into a great big limo ordered by the equally great big Swede, Damian and the Swede singing ‘New York, New York’ at the tops of their voices. Soon they drew up at a seedy-looking place with blacked-out windows and KARAOKE in neon letters above the door. The sun was still blazing overhead.

‘It’s not the toniest joint in town, but it’s the only one in the neighbourhood where you can sing karaoke in daytime. Most of them don’t open till seven,’ said the omniscient barman. But Damian and Lars weren’t listening, as they shouted the final chorus of ‘New York, New York’ into the bouncer’s face.

‘It’s OK, dude, they’re with me,’ said the barman. Lars, still singing, shoved some 100-dollar bills into his hand.

The karaoke bar gave new meaning to the word dingy, but that bothered none of them. There were only a few other punters, and although it was hard to tell in the gloom, it was fair to say that they were probably in a similar condition to Damian and his new chums.

‘Born to be wild, man,’ said Damian, not really aware of what he was saying.

‘YEEEEESSSSSHHHH!!!’ shouted the mad Swede, like a blond Brian Blessed on acid, and soon the three of them were up there on the stage with their air gee-tars, shaking their heads and belting out the theme tune to Easy Rider.

Poppy sat in the sun outside the second-hand bookshop and sipped her freshly squeezed orange juice in total contentment. Her shopping trip had been an unmitigated success, partly thanks to Sandra’s recommendation of this bookshop, which had been run by a lovely old gent called Louis for the past forty-five years. Dapper in pink shirt and chinos, he had smilingly told her that ‘books are my life’, before helping her find exactly what she was looking for.

Inside, the shop was comfortable and welcoming, all polished wood bookshelves and slouchy armchairs, in one of which resided a very sleepy and affectionate tabby cat. Outside, a few rickety tables and chairs had been set out on the pavement under the trees. Louis’ daughter baked a couple of cakes every evening and brought them around the next morning for Louis to serve to his customers (today’s selection was carrot or lemon drizzle). Louis himself squeezed the oranges and brewed the coffee in a little kitchen round the back. It was just heavenly, thought Poppy.

She took a bite of the scrumptious carrot cake and turned her attention to her purchases. Aside from the Halston dress for Bella, she’d also found her a beautifully bound 1920s edition of The Collected Short Stories of Dorothy Parker, which she knew her friend would love. She was aware she was being excessively generous, but her new job paid obscenely well and she still hadn’t got over her guilt over her fling with Ben. For her mother (who had been a proper, bra-burning seventies feminist), a first edition of Fear of Flying and a pair of Art Deco jet-and-emerald earrings, with a necklace to match.

Poppy had had to stop herself buying a first edition of The Grapes of Wrath, which her father, a lifelong lover of Steinbeck, would have treasured were he still in his right mind. He would have no idea what it was now, and it was seriously expensive. Just for a second her gaze misted over, then she shook herself and turned back to her bags of goodies.

For herself, Poppy had picked out a 1930s eau-de-nil silk slip edged with coffee-coloured lace, which she planned to wear as a dress, and an original hardback version of To Kill A Mockingbird, though that might just be on loan to herself. It would be a lovely thing to give her daughter, were she ever to have one; she remembered devouring the book when she was about 12.

The Collected Works of Hemingway, published in 1961 (the year the great man died, as Louis had helpfully pointed out), was a perfect present for her scrivener husband. Poppy savoured the word husband, still loving the sound of it. She’d pop into Macy’s on the way home for a few more bits and pieces for him. Damian was a joy to buy clothes for, his lean build and dark colouring lending themselves well to most styles. It was like having her own life-sized Ken doll, she thought fondly. She was looking forward to introducing him to her boss tonight.

Poppy wiped her fingers on a paper napkin and took another peek in the bag containing the fabulous Halston dress. She hoped Bella would take it in the spirit it was meant, that it wouldn’t scream guilt gift too loudly. She and Bella had been inseparable best friends since they first met as new girls at school, aged 10. Shagging Bella’s boyfriend would have been unforgivable under any circumstances, but when you considered that Ben had been the first person Bella had really thought herself in love with, it was just too awful to contemplate.

When Bella and Ben had first got together, Poppy had been unreservedly delighted for both of them. So when Ben had started flirting with her (very subtly at first – the odd text or Facebook message), she thought she must have been imagining it. After all, he was her boyfriend’s best friend and her best friend’s boyfriend. All very neat and symmetrical. But by the time Ben upped the ante and started coming on to her in person, Poppy was already out of her mind with grief about her father’s illness, and using coke heavily to numb her feelings. Unfortunately, it also numbed her finer feelings.

It all came to a head after the first occasion on which her father didn’t recognize her. Poppy had dealt with it (not very maturely, she knew) by going on a massive bender. It was during this bender that Ben had called her, suggesting they meet one night he knew Damian was going to be away; he had told Bella he was flying to New York for a modelling shoot. Scheming fucker.

If Bella hadn’t walked in on them, maybe nothing more would have happened, maybe … well – who knew what would have happened? But Poppy still couldn’t bear to think about how much she’d hurt Damian and Bella, and was still amazed that either of them had ever spoken to her again (they weren’t so forgiving towards Ben). It was only once she’d shacked up with the vain bastard that she’d realized how incompatible they were, how much she missed Damian. Both Poppy and Ben needed an audience, someone to adore them unconditionally. They’d ended up irritating the shit out of each other, two massive egos both clamouring to be heard loudest.

Whereas, Damian … Poppy smiled fondly again as she thought of Damian. Dear Damian, so cool and laid-back about most things. How she’d missed his dry sense of humour and (OK, she admitted it) pretty much unconditional adoration. They had a great relationship, complemented one another perfectly.

Though it was funny that somebody so laid-back in most areas of his life could be so sensitive professionally. Despite his success in the men’s magazine world (until now), Poppy knew that Damian was highly ambitious and wanted greater recognition. He was a damned good writer, after all, she thought proudly. Probably the best of the lot of them on Stadium, which had showcased his wit and left-field humour perfectly. She sincerely hoped that this recession would prove an ill wind that blew him some good. Who knew what opportunities New York would throw up?

She took her iPhone out of her new Marc Jacobs handbag and called him, just to hear his voice. It rang for ages but there was no reply. Strange. Damian always answered his phone swiftly, just in case it was a commissioning editor (or Poppy herself). She tried again. Still nothing. Oh, well. Instead, she sent a text.

Hope you’ve had a great day darling husband. Looking forward to seeing you at L’Ambassadeur at 8. Wifey x

She finished her cake and orange juice and went inside to say goodbye to Louis. She’d better go home and get changed. She wanted to make a good impression tonight.

Damian was having the time of his life. Ever since he’d hit London in the late nineties he’d been obsessed with obscure dance and indie music, keeping up with the hippest DJs and latest bands, always to be found backstage at gigs and festivals. None of his friends or men’s magazine cronies would believe it if they could see him now, singing along to cheesy Queen hits with the wild abandon of an alcoholic uncle at a wedding. ‘Don’t Stop Me Now’ was going down particularly well.

He and Lars were cheered along by the motley crew of fellow daytime karaoke aficionados that made up their audience. Actually, it was no longer daytime, but most of them had been there since lunchtime. Once the song was over, they prepared to descend from the stage, despite cries of ‘More!’ and ‘Encore!’. The time had come for another drink.

‘Thanks, guys,’ said Damian modestly, taking a bow. ‘But now I think it’s time for somebody else to … to … to … RRRRRRRIP UP THE FLOOR!’ By the time he got to the end of his sentence, he was shouting and waving his mike in the air, to rapturous applause.

‘Darren, my friend,’ slurred Lars. Damian couldn’t be bothered to correct him. ‘Am I glad to have met you, man.’ And without further ado, he slung Damian over his shoulder in a fireman’s lift and carried him to the bar.

Through tears of laughter, Damian started to sing ‘New York, New York’ again, the words muffled against Lars’s huge back.

Lars joined in from somewhere around Damian’s knees, and the rest of the room happily shouted out the chorus. Then there was much shushing as the next singers had mounted the stage, about to give their performance of a lifetime.

‘What you drinkin thish time, man?’ Lars asked Damian, putting him back to his feet like a dishevelled half-Indian rag doll in designer jeans.

‘No no no, it’s my round,’ said Damian, reaching into the wrong pocket for his wallet, and pulling out his phone instead. ‘Ooooh, look, messssage … oh, fuck! Shit, Lars, what’s the time?’

‘Wasssshamatter, old buddy?’ Lars furrowed his blond brow, putting a heavy hand on Damian’s shoulder.

‘Lars, mate, what’s the time?’ Damian had forgotten he could check the time perfectly well himself on his phone. Not to mention his watch.

Lars looked at his enormous Rolex.

‘It’sh twenty hundred hoursh. But why, my friend?’

‘Because I’ve just been reminded where I’m supposed to be, right now. D’you know a place called L’Ambassadeur?’

‘Do I know L’Ambasshadeur?’ Lars smiled broadly. ‘Man, I have sharesh in that place.’

‘Is it far from here?’

‘I’ll take you there, my friend. Who ya meeting there?’

‘Oh, only my wife. And her boss. And his wife.’

Both men stared at each other for a second, then started roaring with laughter again, slapping backs and thighs in total male harmony.

‘So you see, Poppy, it is vitally important that we don’t feed our kids dairy. Cows’ milk is for kiddy cows. We don’t express our milk and feed it to those kiddy cows, now do we?’ Eleanor, Marty’s wife, gave a nervous laugh and Poppy tried to make her own laughter sound sincere. She had to admit Eleanor had a point (if not a vocabulary that included the word calves), which might, at a pinch, be interesting, but all she had talked about since they’d arrived at L’Ambassadeur had been child-rearing. And not the fun stuff that Poppy’s few friends with children back in the UK talked about – the very sweet things they sometimes said or did, or the anecdotes of embarrassing swearwords coming from little mouths in public. Oh, no.

Eleanor’s party chitchat ran the gamut from children’s nutrition to pre-school education to ‘downtime’. Her only son, Hammond (Why did so many Americans have names that should be surnames?) was 18 months old. Poor little bugger. Poppy didn’t think Eleanor was a bad woman, but she was just so bloody earnest, so desperate not to get things wrong. She had a face that hovered between plain and pretty. Her smile was sweet, her jawline delicate and her pale skin flawless, but her forehead was just too narrow, her eyes just too small, her lips just too thin for her to be a proper beauty. Her light brown shoulder-length hair was side parted, very straight and very shiny. A beautifully cut Narciso Rodriguez beige silk shift dress, a few shades lighter than her hair, skimmed a slender body that bore no visible signs of childbirth. Apparently, she’d been a trader on Wall Street, pre-Hammond. Poppy found this very hard to believe.

Marco, the assistant director, who was short, swarthy and good-looking, with several piercings, was wearing skinny black jeans with a corduroy biker’s jacket and a vintage Alexander McQueen skull-printed scarf around his stubbly throat. His partner, Chase, a model for Ralph Lauren, was dressed entirely in Ralph Lauren and as ludicrously handsome as you’d expect a Ralph Lauren model to be, with a broad jaw, high cheekbones and golden-blond hair swept back from a magnificent brow. He appeared to have about as much personality as the shop dummy he resembled.

The conversation had not, so far, been what you’d call sparkling. For the first time since she’d been in NY, Poppy was missing grey old London enormously.

A waiter came to the table.

‘Can I take your order?’

‘We’re still waiting for one of our guests,’ said Marty, who was wearing a black T-shirt under a black Armani jacket and heavy-rimmed glasses that he thought made him look intellectual.

‘It’s OK, Marty, order without him,’ said Poppy. ‘I’m so sorry Damian’s so late. It’s very unlike him.’ Inside, she was seething. Where the fuck was he?

‘No, we’ll wait for your husband,’ said Marty, smiling at his latest protégée, who was looking gorgeous in a sage-green suede sleeveless minidress that matched her eyes and showed off her coltish brown limbs. With her streaky blonde hair loose around her shoulders, he thought she was just delicious. ‘In the meantime, why don’t we get some wine?’

‘Sounds great. A white and a red as some of us are having meat, and some having fish?’ Poppy looked around the table.

‘Two bottles?’ Eleanor looked horrified.

‘Hey, it’s only a couple glasses each,’ said Marco, kicking Poppy under the table. Poppy remembered Fabrice’s tales of Martinis, crystal meth and amyl nitrate with Marco the night before and hid a smile.

‘My nutritionist says there’s so much sugar in wine. And sugar is poison.’

Marty laughed heartily and patted his wife’s hand.

‘Eleanor’s been a lot more aware of her mortality since we had Hammond. Kids do need their moms to be alive, after all.’

Everyone laughed weakly.

‘What about their dads, Marty?’ Poppy couldn’t help it, even though he was her boss.

Marty looked taken aback.

‘Sheesh, well, of course they need their dads too! But their dads can handle their poison as they bring home the bacon –’ he did an excruciating Cockney accent – ‘while their mommies stay home and look after them. And you don’t want a poisoned mommie in charge of the kiddies now, do ya?’

He actually wished Eleanor would lighten up a bit. He was glad his wife was such a great mom, but after two miscarriages that had nearly destroyed their marriage, Ellie’s overwhelming joy when Hammy had been born perfect was rendered almost maniacal by the relief. Her subsequent quest for perfect motherhood was both laudable and intensely wearing.

Poppy looked at Marty askance. She had thought that only the Americans in the middle of the States thought that way. The ones on the East and West coasts were meant to be a tad more liberal.

‘I’ve never been more fulfilled than I am now, staying home and looking after Hammy.’ Poppy couldn’t tell whether Eleanor sounded smug or pleading, as she turned to her with that earnest, slightly scared expression in her pale blue eyes.

‘It must be wonderful,’ she started, trying to be nice, but her words were drowned out by two very drunken male voices. One was singing something that sounded like a Scandinavian folk song. The other – oh, good God, it was Damian – was trying to whisper, very unsubtly, ‘Shhhh, mate, they must be here somewhere.’

‘You musssht not worry, my friend, I have shhooo many shhhhares here, I practically OWN THIS PLACE!’

Poppy was just wondering whether hiding under the table or doing a runner would be the better option, when Eleanor leapt to her feet.

‘Omigod! Lars!’

The enormous blond man took a moment or so to register, then swept Poppy’s boss’s wife off her feet in a huge bear hug.

‘ELLIE!’

Once the Viking had put her down, Eleanor turned to Marty, eyes shining, cheeks flushed, and said, ‘Hey, honey, remember Lars, who used to work with me at Merrill Lynch?’

Marty stood up and held out his hand. ‘I believe we did have the pleasure once.’

‘Oh, Lars, all those hours you kept us going on the trading floor with your smorgasbord and schnapps!’ Eleanor’s mouth was running away with her. ‘Such fun times!’

Damian took advantage of this fortuitous new development to sneak up behind Poppy and kiss the back of her neck. She turned round, glaring at him, and whispered,

‘You are pissed as a fucking fart.’

‘I know. Sorry. I’ll do anything to make it up to you.’

Poppy turned her back on him, only to see that Marco and Chase (who clearly was not made of wood after all) were pissing themselves laughing, giving her the thumbs-up and pulling up a chair for Damian.

Eleanor, Lars and Marty were still standing up, talking, when Lars boomed, in his enormous voice, ‘ASH IT ISH MY BIRTHDAY, I WANT TO BUY SCHNAPPS! FOR ALL!’ He turned to Damian and gave him an almost imperceptible wink. Damian, sitting in a chair between Poppy and Marco, smiled nervously.

‘Oh, honey, don’t you think that sounds grand?’ Eleanor said to her husband. Lars’s arrival seemed to have relaxed her attitude to poisons somewhat. ‘It is his birthday, after all! And – oh, jeez, you cannot be Poppy’s husband? My, what a coincidence. So how did you meet my old friend and colleague Lars then?’

Poppy pinched the tiny bit of flesh on the back of Damian’s ribcage to tell him to think of something cool. To her relief, he came up trumps.

‘Hello. Eleanor, isn’t it? I’m so sorry, we haven’t been introduced properly. Yes, I am Poppy’s husband. Damian …’ He gave a repulsively insincere grin and stood up, holding out his hand. ‘I’m a journalist. I was interviewing Lars about the Scandinavian markets earlier. What a wonderful coincidence.’

Chase said to Poppy, with the first proper bit of animation she’d seen all evening, ‘Man, your husband is hot.’

‘My bloody husband is a useless bloody drunk,’ she started, quietly, only to be hushed by the gay couple.

‘Babe, he is hot,’ they said in unison.

And despite herself, Poppy started to giggle. Who was she actually trying to impress anyway? Marty was an unreconstructed sexist that she could wrap around her little finger, and the rest of them seemed quite fun now.

The waiter brought the bottle of schnapps to the table and they all drank their shots as one.

‘SKOL!’

Eleanor was dancing on the table, singing ‘All That Jazz’ from Chicago. Everybody else cheered her on, and joined in with all the words they knew (basically, the song’s title!). The food, which nobody had touched, had been taken away about half an hour ago by the waiting staff after Lars had thrust several more hundred-dollar bills into their hands.

Now, Eleanor was getting quite raunchy as she sang about ‘rouging her knees and pulling her stockings down’ – raising her skirt and giving a little shimmy as she twirled inexpertly amongst the glasses and bottles.

Poppy, sitting next to Marty, was feeling a tad uncomfortable despite the neat liquor. Her boss had said earlier that mommies shouldn’t be ingesting poisons, after all. She turned to him and saw that he was roaring with laughter and applauding.

‘Sorry about Lars ordering the schnapps,’ she whispered to him.

‘Are you kidding? This is great! THIS is the woman I married.’ And, stumbling slightly, Marty got up to join his wife on the table. Alas, his greater weight was too much and the table collapsed beneath them. Husband and wife lay, roaring with happy laughter, amongst the absolute chaos of broken glass and no-longer starched linen.

‘I love you, Martypoos!’

‘Oh, Elliekins, I love you too!’

And they had a very unseemly public smooch. Poppy thanked God that neither of them seemed to be hurt by the scary-looking green shards of ex-wine bottles that surrounded them.

Poppy was dreaming that Ben was going down on her, his tongue expertly flicking her clitoris, his long-lashed blue eyes looking up at her mischievously. Even in her dream, she hated him, so she bashed his head, hard.

‘Owww,’ said Damian, who was the actual cunnilinguist. ‘I thought I was doing quite well.’

Awake now, Poppy said, ‘Sorry, darling. Bad dream. Please, don’t stop.’

Damian didn’t stop. He continued to lick Poppy’s waxed cunt until he could taste her arousal. She moaned, and Damian opened her up with his fingers, feasting his eyes and keeping her waiting for a couple of seconds, before sliding the first two fingers of his other hand inside her. He bent his head again and resumed sucking, licking, nibbling. Poppy bucked against him, moaning more and more loudly until, with a sharp cry, she came.

He waited a second or two, then started moving his fingers in and out again, ever so slowly, sucking again to milk the very last drops of pleasure from her. Only when he felt her throbbing finally begin to subside did he withdraw his hand, then move up the bed to kiss her on the lips. Poppy kissed him back, liking the taste of herself on him.

‘Mmmm, thank you, darling,’ she said dreamily. ‘That was soooo good.’

Damian leapt to his feet.

‘And now for the second course!’

He walked to the kitchen of their apartment, which was pretty much the interior brickwork urban cool ex-warehouse in the Meatpacking District that Andy had envisaged. He returned bearing a tray heaped with eggs, bacon and mushrooms, waffles and maple syrup, freshly squeezed orange juice, bagels and smoked salmon.

‘Blimey,’ said Poppy, laughing. ‘Are we having guests or something?’

‘Just wanted to say sorry for last night.’ Damian looked up at her from underneath his lashes and she laughed even more. ‘Am I forgiven?’

‘Oh, you totally lovable thing. Thank you – it all looks completely yummy. Yes, of course you’re forgiven – this time. But you’re bloody lucky that Lars and Eleanor go way back. It could have been a fucking disaster.’ She tried to look stern but Damian looked so contrite, and she was feeling so blissfully post-orgasmic, that it was impossible.

‘Right, let’s dig in. Hmmm, waffles or bagels to start … sooo tricky …’ When Poppy remembered to eat, she had the appetite of a horse, yet never gained a pound. It was one of the many things that Bella envied about her.

Chapter 6

Sam tried to ignore the whispering and muffled giggles as she walked into the college canteen. She had dressed as unobtrusively as she could, in jeans and an enormous black jumper that she hoped disguised her boobs. Contrary to what everybody thought, the boobs were natural, a result of her catching glandular fever when she was 14, just as she was starting to develop. Sam would no sooner have taken a knife to her young body than she’d have taken a knife to anybody else’s body, but she’d grown tired of trying to explain. Practically everybody else in the glamour-modelling world had had ‘something done’, and she’d learned quite soon that protesting her chest was natural just got her the reputation of being a stuck-up bitch.

At uni, she tried to disguise them, just as she played down the prettiness of her young face by half covering it in heavy-rimmed specs, and hiding her long dark red hair under unflattering baseball caps. She had an adorable face, peachy-skinned with enormous dark brown eyes and what Mark referred to as blowjob lips. Sam had got into glamour modelling by being discovered while walking the dog in a park near her parents’ home in Romford when she was 17, two years earlier.

She had always wanted to go to uni, but now the fees were so high, it had seemed an impossibility until the seedy photographer accosted her in the park. Her mum and dad’s small catering business was barely afloat with this horrible recession and her little brother Ryan was severely autistic. Much though Sam loved him, she realized what a nightmare (and expense) he was to look after. There was no way she could burden her parents with anything else, and if there was a way for her to fund her own education, then she’d grab it with both hands.

After the initial horror of taking her clothes off in front of men old enough to be her dad, she’d got used to it. Only a couple of them were lechy old pervs, anyway, and Sam was made of pretty stern stuff, rationalizing what she was doing in a clear-headed, logical manner. If this was what she had to do to get the proper education she craved, it wasn’t such a big deal. It wasn’t as if she cared what any of the people in the glamour-modelling world thought of her, after all.

But she did care what her fellow students thought of her. Sam had always been very careful to keep her assets under wraps at uni, as she wanted to be admired for her mind (although she’d come to appreciate her body, which she had thought was freakish, now that Marky seemed to love it so much). Sometimes, in seminars, the tutor would actually say, ‘Could somebody other than Sam please answer this question?’, which made her secretly proud. She was only a girl from an Essex comprehensive, after all, and more than half of her peers had been to posh schools.

But yesterday, horribly, one of the really posh ones, a smug wanker called Josh, had walked into the Union bar brandishing a copy of Nuts

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